The Good Doctor
by palomino333
Summary: "I'm a doctor. My main priority isn't fighting." That had been George's creed until the horrific night at J's Bar, when he and seven other strangers became the prey of the undead.
1. Part I

Resident Evil: Outbreak was my third favorite game of the series (first being the original and the second Resident Evil 2) and I adored the romance between George Hamilton and Cindy Lennox, although the game hadn't completely covered it in detail.

This story (narrated solely by George) will revolve around three levels of the first Outbreak game. In order, they are Outbreak, The Hive, and Decisions, Decisions. Parts I and II will detail Outbreak, Parts III and IV will detail The Hive, and Parts V and VI will detail Decisions, Decisions.

I don't own the Resident Evil series.

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It is sad how fragile a life can be. One moment, a person would be standing in a warm pool of sunshine. The next, that very same person would be cast on his or her back into a cold, dark shadow. Being a doctor, I should have been able to understand that easily.

My patients had lives of their own, all of whom had been interrupted by their misfortunes.

An outstanding example had been a young man, the victim of a weak heart. A successful transplant would have aided him, but a complication had arisen, and the surgery, as a result, had been a failure. It had been an utter shame. He had had his whole life ahead of him.

But the truth had been that I hadn't understood. I had been merely an onlooker. I would not have known of these losses if I hadn't helped to care for these people, so was the way with my career. I had to straighten up, and try again the next day.

However, there did come a day when I finally did comprehend: the day my wife, Ruth, left me. Although I had denied its eventual occurrence out loud whenever I had looked in the mirror, a quiet voice inside of me had said it would be inevitable. Life with her had become hell.

We had had a happy marriage together for many years, but during that time period I had failed to realize she had been slowly slipping away from me. By the time I did know it, it was too late.

Ruth had truly won my heart when we were younger. She had been fun to be around with, charming, and far more extroverted than I. In short, she had lit up my life.

Looking back, I should have kept a better watch of her because of those traits. Although it had been a hard job, I had loved being a surgeon, perhaps a little too much, and I had found myself losing time to see my wife.

The rumors had begun about what she had done when I hadn't been home, and other men had been eyeing her from across the way. I had been no means deaf to the stories and accompanying sniggers, though I still wish now that I could have been.

I hadn't allowed her to see the pain she had put me in, the tears that had fallen when I had been alone, and the self-doubts. Rather, I had let her see the anger that I had felt as well as the sadness, the former becoming a mask. I think that is why I had continued to stay with her; divorcing her would have showed this weakness, a tourniquet to a wound.

The anger had manifested itself in verbal snaps at her, and arguments between us soon followed. I had wanted to hit her, but I couldn't. However, there had been a few occasions when I had come close.

Such a time had occurred that fateful night when I had broken a glass.

I had tried to be congenial by asking if she had wanted to seek marriage counseling. It had been partly due to the fact that I had been beginning to grow tired of acting so angry so often, and partly because I had been even starting to feel bad for being so hard on her, that my mind had changed.

My result had been quite the opposite. Ruth had been the first to yell that time. She had declared how utterly shocked she had been that I actually cared about our marriage for once instead of my job.

Hence the broken glass.

Before I had realized what I had done, she had already risen from her chair,and run to doorway leading out of the kitchen.

"That's it, George Hamilton! I'm through with you!" Ruth had screamed at me.

The next sounds had been clinking of her wedding ring on the tile floor and her retreating footsteps.

I had slowly stepped over the glass, and bent down to pick up the ring while she had vigorously packed her things to leave.

I hadn't tried to stop her. Hadn't had a mind for it. I had merely stared at the abandoned ring in my hand until the door leading out to the street had been decisively slammed behind her.

My trance broken, I had let out a sigh at the fact that I had been truly alone in my own home.

XXXXXX

Three empty weeks later, I found myself once again turning this memory over in my mind at the counter of J's Bar after the especially trying day of my divorce. I had ducked in there because it hadn't been far from the courthouse I had just left behind, and I hadn't been in the mood to go home.

I hadn't been to the bar before, so although the atmosphere was happy and somewhat cozy with the dimmed gold lights, classic-style interior, and the humming rock n' roll music in the background, I still felt isolation placing its choke hold on me.

It was official: Ruth and I were no longer together. The papers had been signed by the two of us, and wedding band was gone from my finger. She had barely even looked at me throughout the entire court proceeding.

"Damn it," I hissed as I stared down at the dark wooden surface of the bar, placing the fingers of my left hand to my brow. The upbeat music emanating from the bar's speakers, the reporter speaking on the multiple televisions, and the clacking of the waitress' high heels as she carried an order to her customer were nothing but faint whispers in my ears.

That was, until the waitress let out a cry of surprise, stumbling in her step. That effectively caused her to dump her tray (and the glass bottle it held) on the floor.

I looked up to see if she was unharmed, and found I needn't have worried.

She had a hand up to her mouth, and was smiling embarrassedly at a muscular dark-skinned security guard, whom she had nearly dumped her items on. A cute, rosy blush was plain to see on her cheeks beneath her widened chocolate eyes.

A slight smile formed on my face at her expression.

If I would have seen what had startled her, however, I would have at least left the bar, or at most informed the authorities. However, those decisions probably would have gotten me killed, seeing as how the future events were to unfold.

But as that hadn't been the case, I instead resolved to order a drink of my own. I had been sitting dry at the counter as was, and perhaps one drink would help me to forget about Ruth for a little while. Besides, I didn't mind the prospect of seeing that pretty waitress again, once she had finished cleaning up her tray and reserving, of course.

As I was about to call the young bartender over for one, the music switched off and the television went to gray simultaneously. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck raise as I glanced around the room for anyone else who had noticed.

A few had. A blonde woman that had been working at her laptop near the window wore a surprised look on her face as her ice blue eyes flicked from blank television screen to blank television screen. A lean man with his long black hair in a ponytail that had been sitting nearest to me had his thin eyebrows raised.

It was to signal the arrival of the demon that was yet to come.

The sound of the bar's front door hitting the wall broke the silence. In limped a pale, dirty figure. He could not even hold his own head up, so all that I could see of his face was a mop of long, matted russet hair. I thought him drunk, but for some reason that write-off wasn't setting well with me.

I heard the bartender comment about the same, and watched him walk over to confront the man.

By then, the attention of the others had been raised. A lanky colored man who had been sitting nearest to the door jerked his head up. A scruffy police officer that had clearly been enjoying his night off at the counter's forefront was turned around, his drink set aside. His free hand was hovering over where his gun was holstered.

I felt my throat move at that visual.

The security guard from earlier growled, "Who is this guy?"

The other guard next to him wasn't nearly as alert. The poor man was pale as a sheet, and had his head down on the bar. He slid to the side, and fell to the floor, causing most of us to gasp.

Ignoring the strange man at the door, I ran over to the fallen man and his friend, who was trying to see if he was all right.

I quickly introduced myself as a doctor and began to examine him when a disgusting tearing sound came from behind me.

I whipped my head around, and in doing so had to stifle a cry of shock. Very few of my fellow patrons had the same success.

The newcomer had his mouth in the bartender's neck, and was tearing at his flesh like a mad man, his teeth being his weapon. A red ribbon flew from his screaming victim and splotched on the floor next to them with a sickening squish.

I shrank back to better protect the sick security guard by placing my body as an obstruction. Since I was only a few feet away from the carnage, my heart rate immediately began to increase, and sweat began to bead on my face.

Two white flashes, one after another, suddenly lit up the wall with loud cracking noises, and the attacker fell backwards out of the doorway. The bartender took advantage of this by slamming the door shut and locking it.

The blue dots left from the flashes remained splotched in my vision, and my head was ringing from the sound of the second shot, the healthy security guard behind me having fired it. The police officer had fired the first one.

Something slammed against the bar's window, causing the blonde woman and the thin man to nearly fall out of their seats in surprise.

Bloodied faces were pushed up against the glass, their mouths agape, and their eyes glazed over. They began to bang on the window, as if wishing to break through it, and left gruesome dark brown and red face, hand, and arm prints from their decaying appendages.

The locked front door began to heave loudly, and I saw the outline of someone outside throwing himself or herself against it full force. What on earth was happening?

It was as if a spell had been broken.

The two who had been sitting by the window dashed away from it, the woman cursing loudly.

The policeman, his gun still drawn, sprinted over to the oversized barrels that they had been using as tables, and began pushing the one that was the closest to the door with his shoulder to form a barricade. All the while, he warned the rest of us to stay away from the windows.

The man with the ponytail ignored him, and instead went over to the second barrel to begin pushing it as well.

I looked back and forth between the pale security guard, who was still on the floor, and the wounded bartender, who was collapsed before the door. They both needed medical attention.

The healthy security guard nodded to me, and helped his friend to stand without holstering his handgun. "Go ahead. We can handle it for now."

I quickly thanked him and focused my attention on the wounded man.

I tilted his brunette head carefully to the side to avoid injuring him, but I needn't have bothered. His eyes were rolled back, his face was beginning to lose color, and his breathing had slowed. He was completely out of it from the rapid blood loss. I tried to remedy that by covering it with my handkerchief, but it grew quite moist quickly. I needed a haemostatic.

Someone skidded to a halt beside me and asked in a frenzied tone, "Is Will gonna be all right?"

I looked up and saw the waitress from before kneeling down beside me. An anxious look was on her face as she repeatedly pushed the strands of stray light blonde hair from her ponytail behind her ears. I couldn't help noticing that those same hands were shaking.

Instead of answering her question, I asked, "Do you have a hemostat around here?"

"I think there's medicine on the second floor. Maybe we can—"

"Cindy! Do you know where the staff room key is?" It was the policeman, who was rummaging behind the counter with the man that had been sitting near the window.

She spun around. "Check the left side, Kevin!"

I pulled out my medical kit with my free hand, hoping I had stowed away some spare medicine earlier.

Much to my disdain, it was empty. I smacked the floor with my fist. "If I only had a red herb!"

"Wait, a red herb? You mean like this?" She asked, as, much to my amazement, she held one out to me.

If the situation had not been as pressing, I would have questioned as to why a waitress would be carrying such a thing on her person, but instead I grabbed it out of her hand and began to crush the leaves into a powder. I normally couldn't make pills quickly, but I had to try.

Worrying more for her colleague's health than her hand becoming dirty, Cindy pressed the cloth down, giving me both of my hands free.

"What are you doing, having a tea party? Hurry up!" A commanding voice called from across the room. I recognized it to be that of the female that had been by the window, but didn't care to look up and break my concentration.

Right after her call came, the door burst away from its hinges, falling to the side. A ghastly moan came almost immediately, followed by the sickening noise of an organic mass forcing its way up to the top of the old barrels.

My heart leapt into my throat as a silvery drool fell onto Will's head. I heard Cindy scream and quickly try to push herself backwards across the floor as I raised my eyes to see that her friend's attacker had returned.

His amber, filmy eyes were not focused just on the bartender, rather they flicked between him, me, and Cindy, his jaw falling further and further open with each glance to reveal a set of blackened yellow teeth. One of them fell onto the floor with the drool he continued to expel.

I felt the urge to gag when I accidentally inhaled the scent of his rancid breath.

I was suddenly yanked back by my collar, the powder from the herb falling out of my hands. I tried to grab Will but missed, and end up taking my medical kit with me instead.

I whirled on my captor, who turned out to be the blonde woman that had yelled over at us before. At the close range, I noticed she had a press pass on, and that her name was Alyssa Ashcroft.

"Release me! I have to help him!"

"Sure, if you want to get yourself killed!" She snapped in an agitated voice, pointing with her free hand back at where his dejected form was.

I looked and cringed.

The creatures that had once been human had descended upon Will, and were tearing him apart with their teeth.

I glanced nervously around for Cindy, and saw that she had been rescued by Kevin.

He was trying as best as he could to push her reluctant body to a door that the other bar patrons were running through without harming her.

Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

I felt a pang of sadness for Will, and another of sympathy for her, but nothing more could be done.

I quickly collected my medical kit and got up, exclaiming to her, "Thank you! You saved me!"

"That's more like it," she replied bitterly, and took off behind the counter with me following close behind.

I was the last to leave the first floor of the bar, and although I didn't see those monstrous beings getting up to follow us, I did hear their chomping recede. I silently prayed that Will had already been on the other side when their cannibalizing of his body had occurred.

XXXXXX

"For the umpteenth time, I don't know!" Cindy exclaimed angrily.

I frowned from where I stood near the medicine shelf, which had been marked with a black cross on a small white paper, and not just because the only useable item I found was a red herb.

David, the man with the ponytail, was being far too hard on her. There was no excuse to act so rudely.

As much as I wanted to confront him, a fight would eat up too much of our time.

Kevin ran over and declared rather loudly, "Ya know, we can also break our way through."

David gave him a look, and then shouldered by him, replying, "Yeah, seeing as how she doesn't know where the hell the damn key is."

We had all successfully made it onto the second floor, and during the chaos I had learned the names of most of the people I now found myself with through their being called. It seemed that I was one of two odd persons out, the others having been frequent customers of the bar, or in Cindy's case, part of the staff.

Although we had thought that our path would lead to sanctuary, we were horribly mistaken. On the stairs, another creature had broken through a window to pull one of us out onto the street. Luckily, no one had been hurt by the flying glass, and its attempt had been unsuccessful, but it did earn a name for itself: zombie.

Jim, the man who had been sitting by the window, had screamed it in a panic, and so the name stuck.

The staff room itself had one that had been slumped over on the floor right before the stairs, its anemic form barely rising and falling. Most of us had chose to pass it while it was still groggy, but Kevin, had wanted to see it dead, perhaps out of an act of vengeance for not being able to save Will from the horde below. Mark, the healthy security guard, had disgustedly called it a waste of bullets.

The adjoining owner's room apparently also held a zombie, since one of my fellow survivors had exited out of it right after she had entered. It had been Yoko, the only patron I had not seen until we had all been racing up the stairs. I had only learned her name when I had asked her about it, the fact being that she was a newcomer to the bar as well.

David's frustration with Cindy had been caused by the fact that although we had a staircase and a new barricade of wooden boards set by Jim between us and the zombies that were chasing us, another locked door was now separating us from the next floor up.

She had thought that the key had been hidden beneath a newspaper on the staff room's coffee table, but it had in fact been absent. Although she had tried to defend herself by saying that the bar's owner had probably taken it home with him without telling her, David hadn't been inclined to listen.

I turned my head away and walked across the room to where David was beating on the door with an iron pipe. Alyssa soon joined in by firing with the handgun she had picked up from somewhere.

With that sort of weaponry simply lying around, I was beginning to wonder what sort of bar this was.

"Shit, here they come!" Jim yelled from where he standing by the barricade. He turned tail and ran toward us.

Looking past him, I saw the first zombie slowly turning the corner.

Kevin appeared next to me and declared, "Allow me."

David and Alyssa lowered their weapons as he aimed a kick at the door, causing it to give almost immediately.

"Et voila!" He exclaimed in a cocky tone, which the two ignored as they passed him rather roughly. Jim was hard on their heels.

Instead of following them, the policeman turned around and ran back to most likely seek out the others.

I was about to enter myself when I saw Mark and Bob, the sick security guard, coming out of an open door across the narrow hallway.

I had inspected Bob shortly after the wooden barricade had been built, and found that he was showing no apparent signs of any known illness.

I was getting the strange, nauseating feeling that it had something to do with the zombies. If so, then the worst was yet to come for him.

I held the door open for the two men. After they had passed through, I went up the stairs.

The door at the top not did not lead to the roof, but to a storeroom packed with different types of liquor. David, Alyssa, and Jim had either gone around the bend that branched off to my left, which Mark and Bob were making their way towards, or through the door to my right. Was there any exiting this maze?

The door opened behind me, drawing my attention, and I saw Cindy enter the room.

Shortly afterwards, Alyssa emerged from the door to my right, carrying a key by its red string in her left hand, and her gun in her right hand.

"Do you recognize this, Cindy?" She asked, holding it out.

The waitress looked at it, and her face lit up. "Yeah, it's the key to the forklift further back!" She took it from her and dashed away.

Alyssa shook her head. "She needs to find something to protect herself. Running off like that will get her killed."

"But she can depend on the rest of us, can't she?" I asked.

She raised her eyebrow at me. "Says the man whose ass I saved."

Although I was by no means ungrateful, her catty tone forced me to take on the defensive. "I'm a doctor. My main priority isn't fighting."

Alyssa began to walk away, tossing over her shoulder, "Then don't play the macho man act, George."

I felt my irritation with her continue to grow as I headed around the bend after her.

Kevin and Yoko came running through the door from the stairwell into the room shortly after. Kevin was carrying on in an archetypal big brother fashion over how heroic it had been to rescue her from the zombies below, while Yoko sheepishly replied that it hadn't been such a big deal.

A loud, jarring rattle came from the door, forcing us into a run once more.

XXXXXX

Much to my displeasure, I was beginning to see Alyssa's point.

With an annoyed groan, I held up my arm as Yoko's flailing foot nearly hit me in the face. Finding the forklift key had been the easy part, in retrospect, against the challenge of fitting eight full-grown adults into a small crawlspace atop of several shelves of hard liquor.

The loss of time from the limited movement wore on us greatly, with the zombies' moans and shuffling footsteps echoing toward us from the opposite end of the cargo area. Mere minutes provided the buffer between our groups.

"Hurry up," Alyssa hissed from behind me.

"I'm trying," I growled, half-twisting my head around for emphasis, although I knew I couldn't see her.

The shutter to the floor directly below us opened with a screech of metal, much to the relief of Bob, who had been leaning against the wall beside it, his bad health making it impossible for him to access the crawlspace.

Mark emerged from the large doorway below as I propelled myself into the opening of the next room.

Staggering to my feet in the low, grayish light, I found myself to be standing in a small access stairwell from the cargo area, the ghastly moans echoing up into it.

A brightly-colored can of pesticide caught my attention on the floor, and I grabbed it as Alyssa forced herself through the opening to the crawlspace. Jim, Yoko, and Cindy hesitated on the stairs above me, while David and Kevin provided backup to Mark below, whose muscular form was just beginning to ascend the bottom set with his friend at his side.

Shortly following him was the hand of the first undead, reaching through the opening and grasping nothing.

David and Kevin rushed downward to help, leaving the rest of us to do what we could from above.

The first zombie headed straight for Bob and Mark, but met the blunt end of one of Mark's bullets. He stumbled backwards, but didn't fall.

Mark took advantage of the being, stunned by a gushing bullet hole in his neck, by pushing past him.

Kevin was plugging bullet holes into the zombie he was facing, but had neglected to see the one coming directly behind him, its outstretched sleeved arms resembling that of a black pincer. David was too engaged in fighting off one of his own, and Mark had ascended too far to be of much help without dropping his friend.

"Watch out!" Cindy cried.

He hadn't heard her. The zombie latched onto him from behind, its mouth gurgling vile, dark red foam.

I lunged forward in a tackle to knock the monster off, but the action was unnecessary, for Alyssa had opened fire on the creature, weakening him enough for Kevin to push him away.

Instead of giving thanks, he yelled, "Get off your butts and go!"

Alyssa sniffed. "Yeah, when your gun runs out of bullets and you get a chunk of your face ripped off, you'll come with us."

His expression became annoyed, and he waved towards the door at the top without showing any signs of budging.

Jim, Cindy, and Yoko gave into his command to run up and out.

I still hesitated. If any of them was to be injured, I needed to stay and heal them. But at the same time, three of our comrades had just gone off into the unknown.

A grisly, decaying hand swiped just short of my face, and I came to the realization that I was doing more harm than good with my stalling.

I ran by Alyssa, who yelled at me for my lack of vigilance, and had joined the others on the roof.

The welcome wagon came in the form of screams of terror drifting up from the street level, and a malicious crow dive bombing at my head, its pointed beak resembling that of an arrow's head.

Thankfully, it was whacked away by Yoko's scrub brush.

"We just can't kill these things!" Jim exclaimed, covering his head with his hands and turning away. I could see red scratches on his hand from where the birds had nipped at him. What else was to become a fiend? Cats? Raccoons? Dogs? Horses? Just how far did this malevolent oddity extend?

Protecting my own head with my arms, I tried to ward the bird off with the can. It was as if Yoko and I were playing demented games of tennis. We had two that were bothering us, and two more that were perched on the top of the structure above, their beady eyes staring down at us.

Unfortunately, those who did have ranged weaponry were still downstairs.

"Cindy, where're you going?" Jim called out.

I looked and saw her veering to the left around a corner.

"I'm going to unlock the storage room! I think there're some weapons in there!" She replied without turning back.

Again, I was wondering what sort of bar this actually was, but I brushed off the thought in order to cover her.

A crow dove off the roof and headed straight for her. I ran forwards, aimed the pesticide at it, and sprayed until the can clicked dry.

The bird let out a squawk of discomfort and flew away, its molted feathers flying.

She took one more turn, this time to the right, and paused before a weather-beaten metal door to unlock it while I lobbed the empty can at the fourth crow, who had followed us.

The can hit the ground with a clang.

Thankfully, the lock was released, and we ran inside.

It was a rather cramped room filled with junk, boxes, and shelves. An eerily flickering light fixture dangled from above the ceiling.

She bent down over a cardboard box nearest to the door. "Look, there're two of them!"

What she picked up were two handguns that had been lying side by side.

Cindy held out one to me, and I took it, turning it over in my hand. It was fully loaded, and easy to use.

"You...good with one of these?" She gingerly held her own out, an unsure expression on her face.

I had really only handled a gun during hunting trips, and that had been a rifle. A hunting rifle was drastically different from a handgun, and so was a deer as opposed to a crow.

But at the same time, I didn't want to make Cindy, who obviously had no experience with the weapon, more nervous than she already was, so I nodded with the best reassuring smile I could muster.

She let out a sigh of relief and relaxed, her arm dropping down to her side. "Then I'll do the best I can."

I was about to search the room further, but heard several shots going off and the pain-filled screeches of a crow breathing its last.

We ran out of the room into to see what was going on, Cindy nearly taking a blow from the crow who had been waiting for us on top of the structure.

She ducked while I fired up at it, the gunfire emitted joining that of the guns that were going off around the corner.

It was difficult to hit my moving target, given the dual facts that the gun was so flimsy, and the cowardly winged rat kept flying in and out of the light above the door. The gun shook slightly in my hand from my lack of experience with it, and each shot I took hit nothing.

Cindy joined in the firefight when the crow was far enough away, but only managed to hit the light fixture.

Finally, after the fifth shot had gone off, the crow let out a loud squawk and fell.

I smiled in triumph, although I felt embarrassed in front of her.

She didn't seem to have minded my lie about my marksmanship, for when I turned to her, the same smile was upon her own face. We nodded to one another and took off to rejoin the group.

Once we did, however, our cheerful mood was shattered by a lone shot that went off as we rounded the corner, and the sight that followed.

I put a hand to my head and whispered "no," as I took in the form of Bob lying on his side, a bullet wound to his head. The once-hidden gun in his hand signified suicide. He was surrounded by the others, all of whom showed their own signs of grief, Mark's being the most damaging with how he screamed his lost friend's name.

None of those who had been on the stairs had endured any major injuries; Bob was the only casualty. The screams that echoed through the night from below us served to only make the scene more depressing.

"He said he didn't want to become one of them," Yoko informed me in a dejected tone from where she stood beside me.

Terror overwhelmed my sadness. It was confirmed; Bob had been on his way to becoming a zombie himself. That meant that all of us were as well. My hand fell from my head to my side, the blood roaring in my ears.

No, I kept telling myself, it couldn't be true! But it was. It was lying right before us in the form of an innocent man.

A heavy banging on the door leading to the roof broke the silence.

"I thought you killed all them off on the stairs!" Jim yelled in exasperation.

"Well, I guess there are more than we thought," Kevin replied, annoyed.

"Which means we should be going. Now," Alyssa chimed in, and with a final sad look at Bob and Mark, ran past us to find an exit.

Kevin, Jim, and Yoko followed her silently. I was still paralyzed with the dreadful knowledge I had just obtained, Cindy was extending her sympathies to an impassive Mark, David was staring down at him quietly, and the man in question was muttering something under his breath.

Suddenly, a loud squealing of metal pealed out. The door had given.

Mark rose, taking his own gun from his belt. "Well, you heard her. Come on!"

We quickly joined the others and saw that Alyssa, obviously out of ammo, and Jim were throwing themselves against a weak portion of chain link fence, presumably the maintenance man's gate. Beyond it led a catwalk next to the large neon letters that spelled out the bar's name.

Kevin, apparently having found a liking for his previous strategy, was kicking it, and Yoko was hitting it with the scrub brush. Much to her surprise, the brush end popped off as the gate collapsed.

A voice, amplified by a bullhorn, rose above the continuing cries from below.

"Attention everyone! Due to the riots in progress, this area will be closed off soon. If you do not proceed to this check point immediately, we cannot ensure your safety."

We yelled in protest. It wasn't fair! We had fought for our lives and experienced the deaths of two of our fellow men, all to be forced into a race?

"Well, it looks like there's no choice," Kevin declared, hoisting himself up onto the catwalk.

I carefully placed my weapon in my jacket pocket, and with a deep breath, hauled myself onto the catwalk. I ran forward to pull myself up yet again.

The screams, the running feet, the exclamations of their owners before me, and the moans proved a nightmarish background noise, while the sporadic flash of the neon light seemed to slow everything to a horrific crawl.

I panted hard, perspiration slid down the sides of my face, and my heart thumped.

When I got to the edge of the catwalk, I swore that I was dreaming, that one misstep would not send me falling to my death, but back into my own alert mind. It was highly probable that this scenario was a merely a nightmare that had been conjured by the high levels of stress I had been recently enduring, and not a reality.

"George, what're you waiting for? Come on!"

My head jerked up. It was Cindy, who was already on the opposite roof. She was bent down to put her high heels back on, having taken them off to jump. Yoko was next to her, waving me forward animatedly. Kevin was standing right before them, his hand outstretched. Mark was doing the same. David, Alyssa, and Jim had yet to jump.

"Don't worry, we'll catch you!" Kevin called across.

Back on the rooftop, several zombies had invaded the area and were making their way painstakingly toward the catwalk's ledge.

"Go," David uttered from behind me.

I made my decision. Whether they were real or not, these people needed my help, and I needed theirs as well if I was to survive.

I quickly backed up and leapt across, my arms outstretched toward Kevin and Mark. They each grabbed one and yanked me onto the roof of the neighboring building as if I was a rag doll.

I doubled over to catch a breath I didn't realize I had been holding in, and stared down at my outstretched hands, which shook slightly.

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

"Are you all right?" Cindy asked.

I looked over at her and nodded soberly, pulling myself together. I felt a little embarrassed at how I had looked, but it didn't matter. Dreaming or not, I was alive, and that could not be disputed.


	2. Part II

Sorry this is so long. The next chapter will be shorter because it detail the journey of three, rather than eight, characters. I own nothing.

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The sprint to the checkpoint was the beginning of a much greater pandemonium. The eight of us were forced to cram together onto the elevator of the apartment building that had been neighboring the bar. If only the door to the stairs hadn't been locked. It was pure misery to feel Kevin's elbow in my ribs and Alyssa's high-heeled shoe on my foot.

A female zombie was waiting for us on the first floor, her arms extended, and her long, stringy black hair hanging out of her lopsided headband. She had been fairly young in her life, most likely a teenager. A sinking feeling formed in the pit of my stomach at just how young an age of victims this outbreak had extended.

Her outstretched hands found Mark's shoulders, and comically dwarfed by their superior size.

He instantly reacted by shoving her backwards so hard that she had skidded and hit the door leading to the stairs with a groan, stunned.

"Don't even think about it," the security guard growled.

Kevin, apprehensive of his action, dropped back slightly to gain some distance away from Mark. In doing so, he once again brought himself shoulder-to-shoulder with me.

Not wanting to feel the sensation of my rib cage being squished again, I pushed him away from me by my own elbow, earning an annoyed response, and turned to run out to the door leading to the street.

Just as I had done so, the glass window on the right of the hallway just before the door broke, and in tumbled a male zombie, knocking down Jim, who had a moment ago been running between David and Mark.

He screamed for help, turning his head back and forth to keep his neck away from the hungry undead's mouth while Mark and David had struggled to get the creature off of him.

Gunfire exploded from behind us, indicating that someone was making work of the female zombie.

David bashed the male zombie in the head with his iron pipe, sending him falling to the floor next to Mark, who had backed up. Mark dispatched the creature with a shot to the head from his handgun.

Jim was still been screaming, though it was out of pain as opposed to fear. Tears ran down his cheeks as his left hand had placed itself on his right shoulder.

I was by his side before Mark or David could call me.

Jim had all the reason to scream. Four ugly bits of broken glass had torn through his jacket, shirt, and finally skin, drawing blood that streamed gruesomely down his right shoulder.

I tried to be as reassuring as I could by waving everyone else along.

As Cindy had passed us, however, I commanded her to stop.

"Can you move it?" I had asked Jim, my voice calm.

"Move it? My shoulder feels like it's being ripped apart, and you're asking me to fucking move it?" He snapped in reply.

"All right, all right, calm down." I waved my hand in a slowly despite the fact that our time was racing by.

"Calm down? Are you shitting me?"

I told Cindy to get whatever red herbs she had out, and helped Jim to stand. We exited through door to the front, which Cindy had opened. Somehow, we still made it out in time.

Outside turned out to be much worse than the inside had been.

The control the police had over Raccoon City was quickly deteriorating. People ran blindly from the throng of zombies that were detained by the mere handful of police men and their vehicles.

The battle was a losing one, and it was a hard blow to Kevin to watch one of his fellow policemen getting his throat ripped to ribbons by a zombie's teeth. David and Mark grabbed onto the edge of his uniform to keep him from running off the apartment's stoop to confront the zombie.

The sound of the door swinging shut behind me grabbed the attention of a nearby officer who was standing behind a horizontally parked police car. He whipped around to face us, his shotgun pointed menacingly.

"No, no! Don't shoot!" Jim screamed.

Kevin, however, exclaimed in an ecstatic voice, "Raymond!"

He gave a nod of recognition, and dropped his weapon. "You startled me. This entire city's turning into a war zone. We're gonna need all the help we can get. Now, move those police cars to form a barricade. Go!" Raymond pointed towards a vertically parked police cruiser close to his own, and then off to another horizontally parked car right in front of the doorway to J's Bar.

A policeman was trying to push it to form a second barrier while a few others further down the street past the barricades were shooting the zombies that were continuously coming their way.

My car and the others that had been parked there before were long gone. They had either been towed away to provide room, or had been stolen to provide a getaway for other survivors.

"Wait!" I yelled, "What about him?" I gestured quickly to Jim.

Raymond, much to my dismay, shook his head. "The last ambulance took off a few minutes ago. I can try radioing for the paramedics again, but they're already tied up by the situation. Check the trunk of this car."

At that, he turned back and continued his fire on the converging zombies.

I clenched my fist at lack of help. Kevin and Alyssa ran off to assist with the barricades, and Mark and David soon joined them. Yoko busied herself with opening the trunk of the police car.

As we carried Jim over to the side behind the first vertically parked police car, which Mark and David began pushing, Jim cussed out the utter inefficiency of the paramedics, much to my growing agitation.

"Now you just stop that!" Cindy admonished as we had laid him down, "You're not helping anyone by acting that way!"

"S-sorry," Jim replied embarrassedly.

Within a few moments, Yoko appeared next to us, holding out a can of first-aid spray.

After thanking her for finding it, I took the can and asked if she had a cloth or tissue with her.

Once she had placed the wooden pole down, she reached into her backpack, and produced a still-sealed pack of tissues.

Taking out my handgun, I offered it to her.

Yoko took it, saying, "I don't think I'll hit anything."

I didn't care. If Cindy and I were to be at work healing Jim, we would need someone to defend us.

I think that Jim was more inclined to believe that he was bleeding to death with the screams he gave as I had cautiously removed each of the four razor-tipped pieces from his right shoulder. I didn't blame him, since there hadn't been an antiseptic anywhere nearby.

While I worked as quickly as I could to fashion my only red herb, and one of hers into hemostats, I had my partner next to me wrap the remaining tissues around her hands, and begin to apply pressure to his wound. Jim chattered away nervously all the while.

Cindy kept throwing glances over her shoulder to the scene before us, and I had to ask her to stop in order to keep Jim from flying into hysterics again. She looked up at me for a moment, her eyes searching my face as if deciphering whether she could trust me or not.

She was lost, and I had knew that I felt the same way, but I hadn't allowed that to show when there had been someone to attend to. And that fact, as much as I hated to admit it, made me slightly annoyed, though not with Cindy herself. It was because there hadn't been with someone more skilled on hand to help me.

I reached out a hand and squeezed hers, her expression changing from bewildered to confident. She nodded and resolved to keep her focus on Jim.

Finally, the pills were ready.

"Jim, given the situation, you'll have to take these dry."

"'Long as it keeps me from bleeding all over the pavement," hereplied curtly before injesting them. As he did so, I told Cindy stop pressing upon the wound in order for me to clean it with the first aid spray.

"You're done," I had declared proudly.

Jim had grinned broadly, and Cindy clasped her hands together with an elated giggle.

Running feet drew my attention, and I saw that Raymond had fallen back to fumble with a padlock on a door set into the wall directly across from us. Yoko was standing next to him.

He turned to face the others out among the cars, and yelled, "We have to go now!"

I looked in the same direction, and to my anguish saw that Kevin and Alyssa were being chased back down the street toward us by a steadily growing number of zombies. Neither the policeman that they had been assisting, nor the others that had intrepidly been facing down the zombies beyond the barricades, were with them. Mark and David had been busy with their own problem; even more zombies had been converging past the first barricade.

There was a fatal flaw with the barricades: the zombies were able to crawl underneath the cars.

I turned my head to look at Jim, who had by then sat up. The bleeding had stopped, but blood was still been dripping from his jacket and the shirt beneath.

"You need to find a weapon as soon as you can," I warned him as he had pushed himself up, "Favor your left arm for a moment, and then your right."

He did so, and although his right arm hadn't necessarily as strong as his left (it trembled slightly, and he whimpered), it still held his weight successfully.

After the test was passed, I joined the officer, was firing back on the zombies, and Yoko near the door.

She had held out my gun with an apologetic look on her face. "There are only a couple rounds left."

I smiled reassuringly, taking it from her. "At least as you are unharmed."

"Here they come!" Cindy exclaimed.

Turning, I saw Kevin and Alyssa scrambling over the first barricade, and the zombies that had passed it were unmoving, bloody messes on the ground. David and Mark had seen to that. Still, a writhing, putrid blur of rotten flesh, sightless eyes, oozing blood, and crumbling bone continued toward us just behind the police car that Kevin and Alyssa had hopped over.

Raymond scanned the area for any more survivors, and ran through the doors he had popped the lock to. He hadn't had any time to show remorse for his fallen comrades, and neither had Kevin.

We all followed suit, the officer locking the door behind us, and ended up running down a narrow alleyway between the apartment and the building that neighbored it. The low light on the gray walls on each side cast by the precious few side lamps of the two buildings was been gloomy and depressing, and the crates stacked sporadically in the alleyway made it claustrophobic.

The other end of the alleyway had another locked door. The surprise on Raymond's face indicated that he neither had known that that it would be, nor did he have the key to it, much to everyone's frustration. All the while, the zombies' moans had continued to drone on, their volumes steadily increasing as the creatures drew near. My heart began to beat hard as I remembered them breaking down the bar's door.

Raymond swung his shotgun down into a firing position to fire at the opposite door when Mark yelled, "Someone cover up those holes!"

We whipped around, and Alyssa muttered bitterly, "You must be kidding me."

What we had all failed to see before were the ground-level rectangular arches built into the wall. They were high enough and wide enough for several average-sized human bodies to pull themselves through. About four zombies on each side of the door were squeezing through, their arms flailing outwards.

"I'll break this door open from here. In the meantime, do whatever you can to fend them off!" Raymond ordered before starting his task at hand.

"Oh, how cute. There's one for each of us," David growled, stalking forwards with a wooden pole gripped tightly in his hands. The iron pole had been abandoned on the previous street.

We followed behind him, though some of us were more apprehensive than others. I was forced to lag back somewhat because of the shortage of ammo for my only weapon. True, I also had the ability to use my body as a weapon, but I had decided to save that for an unpreventable scenario.

"George!"

I turned my head to see Yoko. She was standing near where a few crates had been stacked on the right side of the pathway, and appeared to be holding something in her left hand, while her right had been gripped onto her wooden pole.

I darted over to her. "What is it?"

She had held out her left hand, its fingers opened. "This should compensate for earlier." It was a set of handgun rounds.

I took it and reloaded my weapon, reassuring her, "There's no need to apologize, Yoko, but thank you."

She nodded with a sheepish grin, and left to assist in the attack. As she did so, I noticed a glint of silver in the mixed light at the bottom of the pole. Somehow, a knife had been attached to the end of the pole strongly enough to keep it from falling off.

I charged after her, my heart and mind racing. Taking that ammo had sealed off any excuse I had for not fighting. True, I had shot an infected crow down, but that had still been an animal. These infected bodies in question had been once human, and still wore a human disguise. To survive, I had to kill off the shells that I had sworn by the Hippocratic Oath to protect. Merely running from or fending off one of them had been an entirely different, innocent thing. Was I up to it?

I steeled myself as I came to a halt before one of them. A male, his entire jaw broken, was slumped before me, with red liquid gushing out of it onto his light blue plaid shirt. The skin of the bald spot in the middle of his brunette head had rotted away to reveal the repulsive sight of his deteriorating brain tissue. His deathly pale, skinny arms reached out to hook onto my shoulders.

And there I stood, a stark contrast to him, with sweet life flowing through my veins to the pink skin of my undamaged body. What a miracle! What a brittle, sacred miracle!

That epiphany turned this being before me from an unfortunate creation of science into a malignant cancer that had to be removed from the face of the earth. Its exposed brain tissue would provide an instant kill.

I raised the handgun, and fired one shot.

He, or rather it, fell to the ground instantly in pool of red goo that had disgusting chunks of cerebral organic matter either splattered around it, or floating in it.

My free hand shot to my nose and mouth from the stench, which made me yearn for my surgical mask.

A pair of pallid arms had suddenly shot forwards into my vision, and I backed up to keep from being grabbed by the next zombie making its way through the hole.

"Hey, I could use a little help here!"

I whipped around to see Kevin, who had two zombies coming at him at once, their mouths agape with hunger as they went for the throbbing vein in the officer's neck.

I darted over to him, firing a few shots at the zombie closest to me as I went. It crashed to the ground with a final, miserable moan.

"Thanks, Doc!" Kevin yelled, successfully gunning down the other zombie before him. I hadn't been able to help but notice the fact that he sounded short of breath. His valiant rushing into battle preemptively was taking a toll on him.

A sickening crack resonated from nearby.

When I turned to see its source, I backed up almost instantly. A zombie that the officer and I had failed to see in our flustered state was fixed into place before me, its arms waving back and forth horizontally without pause in my direction, despite its neck impalement. Their bearer's deep set, filmy eyes were given a ghostly glow from the nearby light fixture. What kept it from advancing on either of us was the blade of Yoko's makeshift spear.

Her face, red and contorted with the exertion, appeared to the side of the creature. "Please, move! I can't hold him back for long!"

Shortly after, Yoko let out a gasp, and the zombie staggered forward.

Although my gun was still in my hand, the creature's pace was too quick for me to aim and fire it at its face.

My eyes shut, and I ducked, praying that Kevin was able to fire over my head.

Suddenly, with a moan of protest and a spurting sound, the zombie was jerked backwards again.

I opened my eyes to see that Yoko and also David, who had materialized behind her, had gotten hold of the spear, and using their joint efforts to tug the monster back again. The "fresh" blood that had been drawn from the zombie's thick neck with the movement splattered on the pavement between us.

"Fling it to your right, Yoko!" David ordered the rather surprised girl, who complied immediately. The zombie was smashed against the wall that had separated us from the outside street, and slid down on top of the arms that were groping their way in, its body twitching all the way. A bullet to the heart from Kevin finally put the creature out of its misery.

"Wow, er, thanks," Yoko muttered in an awkward tone as her helper walked over to the zombie. Running steps from behind me gave away the fact that Kevin had taken his leave.

As I began to offer my own gratitude, David did something that had made the words die in my throat due to disgust. Bracing one foot on the blood-streaked torso of the fallen body, he yanked the spear out, and presented it to a wide-eyed Yoko, growling, "Be more careful with this. I didn't make it for nothing."

A yell broke the tension. "Hurry! The door is open!"

The next few zombies dragged their torsos forward through the holes, all the while blatantly ignoring the shots and blows against them. One zombie even continued to scramble forwards after Alyssa kicked the side of its face in with her heel. Its head bobbed around like a twisted parody of a doll.

Ahead of me, I saw Jim, who had secured an iron pipe as a weapon. He slowly backed away, and then ran from the walking corpse he had clubbed with it. Although the zombie had most likely suffered some trauma from the blows, it still stood, and followed after him instantaneously.

"Oh no, you don't!" The shot from Cindy's handgun reinforced her point as it hit the creature's chest.

Raymond had run by me to shepherd the others to their destination.

Cindy was making her way down from the crate upon which she stood, a feat that was hard to accomplish with her footwear.

I obligingly offered my arm to her.

"Thank you. I'm sorry if I slowed you down. Three zombies came after me, and I had to get out of the way, and Mark pushed me up here, and—"

I cut off her rapid-fire apology and explanation, most likely having been generated by her stress level, with a brisk shake of my head. "There's no time left! We have to move!"

The alleyway led to an overpass with the wall continuing to its left, and a precarious drop into a moat of filthy sewage water below to its right, although its smell was nothing compared to the rankness of death. At the end of the overpass, a fuel tanker was parked, and a wooden barricade blocked the way to the rest of the road. A few streetlights lit the area in splashes. The moans seemed to surround us on both sides, with some of them stemming from beyond the new barricade, and others following along behind from the alleyway.

"Move, damn it! MOVE!" Raymond's voice was more hysterical than commanding as it traveled out of the doorway.

Without breaking my stride, I looked over my shoulder to see Alyssa, with a sour expression on her face, running through the doorway. She seemed just as ready to turn back and assist those behind her.

Behind her came Yoko, who was wielding the spear tightly, and David. Yoko seemed relieved to be free of the zombies for at least a little while. David's face held a cynical expression. He had not let the relief overtake him, as there were more creatures to come.

Shortly after, Mark was next. Anger and frustration were plain to see on his face. "They call themselves police? This is ridiculous!"

I had grasped his meaning. If the police force were not so disorganized in the situation, we would have had more help than just two officers, and not quite so many others would have been killed.

Something about that had rung a bell in the back of my mind, but I was too inclined into the haste of the moment to really think more on it..

Finally, Kevin and Raymond made their way backwards out of the doorway, continuing their firing. Not too far from them were the zombies, and the smell of rot that followed them. Even Raymond's mighty shotgun did little to stall the group's advance because of its numbers.

A few of us had run back to help them, but Raymond whipped around, waving his hand at Kevin as well as us. "Hey, you should go now!"

A zombie with a smashed face took advantage of his break in concentration by latching onto his back. It was the same one Alyssa had kicked earlier. Raymond's light blue uniform went dark on the left shoulder immediately by the amount of drool that was spilling from the zombie's gaping mouth, along with the blood from its face wound.

Kevin cocked his gun to fire at the creature, but it clicked empty.

"NO!" He yelled.

Raymond pushed the zombie back a small distance. "Same your ammo! You'll need it!"

He inclined his head toward the fuel tanker behind us. "Turn the valve on that, and burn these bastards! Do it now!"

Just as the zombie's head lowered back into position, Mark, in direct defiance of his orders, fired, causing it to reel backwards, but not fall. Its grip on Raymond was surprisingly tight.

Aiming was harder than before because not only were there other creatures staggering toward us, but Raymond was also partly in the way.

I panted hard with the effort of holding a grip on myself. I knew that Mark was far more experienced with a handgun than I, but that wasn't an excuse for me not to take action.

"George, don't shoot!" Mark yelled, having noticed my unease.

I dropped the gun in relief.

Kevin lunged at the zombie from the side. However, his attempt caused more harm than good. Instead of dislodging the monster from Raymond, he accidentally knocked the two of them over, and took himself down with them due to his body weight.

"Cover me, Doc!" Mark ordered as he dove downwards to help the officers out of their deadly tangle while I shot the zombies that were looming above him.

It was a fearful few moments. I felt alone in my standing position as I swiveled around as quickly as I could to score a shot at my dangerously close targets.

I called out frantically for help, and it arrived in the form of two zombies on the left and right side of me collapsing to the ground.

"Where were you two?" I exclaimed at Cindy and Alyssa, who revealed themselves to be the shooters.

"Nice way to say thanks," Alyssa replied with a sniff.

"There were zombies under the tanker! We had to help fight them off while the others made their way over to the valve," Cindy quickly explained as she took a shot at the engorged stomach of a rather heavyset zombie that was headed straight toward her.

Alyssa repeated the action with one that was coming in her direction.

A headline, and its following story flashed past my mind's eye. Not too long ago, there were been reports of missing persons filtering throughout Raccoon City, all of them having blonde hair. Some bodies of the victims had been found, but they had been horribly mutilated, not unlike the victims that been taken a few months prior. The prior of the incidents had led to an investigation in the Arklay Mountains by the STARS of the RPD, the faulty results of which had critics calling the police clumsy and management-challenged. Some of those critics had surprisingly been members of the STARS themselves.

A disgusting cracking noise rung out from below us, with Raymond's scream soon to follow.

"Damn you!" Kevin screamed as Mark yanked him off of the officer.

Raymond was writhing in pain on the ground while the zombie eagerly lapped the blood from its victim's neck.

"Let go of me! Let go!" Kevin yelled angrily, struggling against the security guard.

Mark dragged him backwards away from his friend with almost superhuman strength. Likewsie, Alyssa, Cindy, and I backed up of our own accord before breaking into a run.

Officer Raymond, meanwhile, became the interest of the undead, who eagerly joined their comrade in eating him alive.

One of those who was gorging itself on him resided in the shell of a female with a hole in the middle of her face from where her nose had rotted clean off. She took the pleasure in being the first to scalp Raymond by sinking her teeth into the crown of pale blonde hair that his cap had fallen off of.

All the while, however, he never reached for his shotgun, which lay so conveniently by his side.

"Get of the way!" David, Jim, and Yoko chorused as a river of fuel gushed out of the truck.

We quickly swerved to the right to avoid its trail, which ran straight through the zombies' feast.

"No! Don't do it! He's alive!" Kevin shrieked. He was standing at that point, but Mark kept a firm grip on his arm.

David paid him no heed.

Just as the plumber threw a lighter he had taken out of his pocket onto the fuel, Alyssa started over to Kevin, a glare plain to see on her face.

The sharp slap she gave him was illuminated by the fire that blazed down the path a moment later. "Pull yourself together!"

I covered my mouth at the stench of burning flesh, and angled myself so that my back was to the sight of the undead truly finding their hell on earth. I hadn't the ability to deafen myself, however, to the pained groans and crackling noise of once-human bodies being reduced to carbon ash. The heat spiked, making the scene extremely uncomfortable to bear.

As such, our only alternative was to take a long leap down into the waterway below before the tanker exploded. Kevin jumped of his own accord, but Mark refused to let go of him until he had hit the water. Cindy went in beside me, taking care to hold her skirt down with one hand.

The water was freezing, a welcome break from the overpass above. We quickly swam over to a tunnel in the wall before us just as the rest of our group had leapt in.

First it was Kevin's turn, then Mark's, then Cindy's, and finally, mine, to crawl up and through. I had myself up, grunting with both the exertion and pain of the bricks in my chest, and crept into the tunnel.

Soon after the others made their way in, an earsplitting sound and a massive force had rocked the tunnel and ourselves, so much so in fact that we took a few minutes afterwards to readjust.

The trek through the sewer to the nearest manhole was filled with little conversation and the squeaks of rats.

Cindy became jumpy, and even started even a rat ran past her foot, screaming, "First the bar, now this!"

"Wait, what do you mean?'" Alyssa asked suspiciously, raising an eyebrow.

Cindy's reaction, which consisted of shuddering, was enough.

I had the urge to kill the rat, but I knew it would be a waste of precious bullets. Instead of attacking us, i scampered off in another direction. I had the strongest notion that the animal was connected to everything somehow, but I couldn't make the pieces fit together.

The exit from the squalor dank sewer was refreshing, if only for a moment. I found it rather the sick joke that we were safer in a hole of rats than out in what remained of civilized society, but it couldn't be helped.

We made our way down a street past the Apple Inn to the site of an abandoned truck that had been sideswiped by an equally empty, but blood-stained taxi cab. The stoplight above it served only to make the scene more dreamlike in the way the red solely flickered on and off.

A mustached police officer emerged from a nearby door, and informed the (save for us) deserted street and those beyond it via bullhorn that the RPD would be taking whomever made it to his location within a short amount of time on to a safe zone.

David gave a humorless laugh at that.

In the meantime, Alyssa took the opportunity to extract more information from Cindy.

"So, you said that there were rats in the bar tonight. I've been there I don't know how many times, and I haven't seen so much as a tail," the reporter commented, leaning back against a mailbox in front of an abandoned deli. She looked at between David, Jim, and Mark (Kevin was talking to the officer), and asked, "Have any of you?"

David and Mark shook their heads, while Jim replied, "No way! We get enough of 'em underground!" His subway attendant's uniform proved that.

"So, have you seen any in the whole time you worked there?" Alyssa asked Cindy in a forward tone.

She shook her head. "No, and I worked there for about two years. Jack prided himself on that, and Will used to joke about laying traps."

The sadness in talking of what had seemed like a past life to her shined through in her voice.

Yoko placed a hand on her shoulder sympathetically.

As much as I wanted to comfort her, I was too preoccupied with my own thoughts. How could a rat suddenly appear in a place it hadn't entered before?

Alyssa touched the fingers of her right hand to her temple. "You know what I don't understand? Right after the rat showed up, the TV and radio cut, and then the Man of the Hour made his entrance. I'd be insulting my own intelligence to just write off those happenings as coincidences."

Her words made stirred my thoughts, and I felt a dual sense of relief at a conundrum being solved, and dread at the truth its answer held.

"The rats spread the virus." I stated flatly.

When the others looked over at me, I added, "That's what this evidence points to, doesn't it?"

Kevin ran over, a deep frown on his face. "We can't wait any longer." He didn't go on to say the alternative.

"So, this is it?" Yoko asked in a hollow tone, peering back down the direction we had arrived in. The only approaching figure we saw was a plastic bag blowing in the wind.

"Looks like it," David replied after a silence, and I felt a chill creep up my spine, one that was too cold to have been caused by my damp clothing.

XXXXXX

The ride to the safe area was quiet more due to exhaustion than anything. We slumped down eagerly onto the benches on either side of the interior of the armored van that was provided for us.

I hadn't realized how important it was to really sit and rest until I placed myself upon that bench. It was a snug fit because the bench directly across me was cut in half for weapons to be stored, but I didn't care.

I informed Kevin of the developments we had made in the importance of the rats, and needless to say, his reaction was disgusted.

We took advantage of the weaponry. After all, it had been placed in a civilian transport vehicle. There were about four shotguns lined against the vertical rack, all fully loaded. Kevin, Alyssa, Mark, and I had each confiscated one, and Yoko had took it upon herself to place the hefty amount of shotgun rounds in her backpack, in case any of us needed them.

Holding the shotgun made me feel more confident. It wasn't been a rifle, but it was closer than a handgun.

I didn't relinquish the old weapon, however. It was foolish to think that this newer firearm would last me as long as I needed it to.

Mark found two sets of handgun rounds stacked near the shotgun rack, and gave one to Cindy after keeping the other for himself.

Kevin also picked up a special set of rounds for his empty .45, but had grimaced when he saw that it was the only one.

Mark gave him a look, but didn't say anything more.

As our vehicle pulled through several side streets, the streetlights cast eerie white glows on each of our faces through the double windows of the doors we had entered through. They set on us on edge, for even a benign shadow took on the guise of a zombie or some other form of bogeyman in our heads. They also illuminated different features on some of my fellow survivors that I hadn't seen before.

Mark, Jim, and Cindy were sitting across from me by the shotgun rack.

Mark's eyes held a sort of twinkle to them, as if he felt a sort of affectionate closeness with someone, though his gaze wasn't focused on anyone near him. It was fixed on something in the distance.

Jim was looking quickly from place to place within the area. I would have taken this to be a sign of fear, if I hadn't realized how his eyes were narrowed slightly, giving him a calculating look. He memorizing the area like a puzzle.

Cindy's hands were in her lap, clutching the gun tightly, while she was sitting up stalk straight. Despite her apprehension, her face held a sense of hardness. She was set in her goal to live, and that comforted me a little.

I wondered what they saw in my own face, and I felt the hairs rising up on the back of my neck at the thought of such exposure.

"Damn! Another barricade!"

We started at the driver's yell, and looked up at the hole connecting the holding area to the driving area to see him looking back at us with a frustrated expression on his face. "As you can see, there are too many roadblocks. I'm afraid you'll have to get out and continue on foot."

The news elicited frenzied screams of anger and desperation from each of us. Although I knew that the police were overwhelmed as was, my selfish human nature of survival made that information leave my head for that moment.

"Are you serious, Dorian? The police station is still twelve blocks off!" Kevin exclaimed.

"There is no choice, Kevin."

After an aggravating time period of being forced to leave the van, and climbing out of the small space without banging into one another, we had made way onto the well-lit street.

A new barricade of parked vehicles was formed in the direction we had just come in, and an older one of collapsible roadblocks was set in the front. The area seemed safe, but the zombies' moans had still persisted.

Kevin cracked his neck. "All right, if we take that path behind the apartment building," he pointed to the right side in front of the van as indication, "we'll be on the path to the station."

"That is, if we don't get killed first, right?" Jim asked sarcastically.

He was ignored, but I added, "Are you sure there isn't another safe area near here for us?"

"As far as I know, there isn't."

I knew one safe area, the hospital I worked at, but it was too far off. Judging by the blank faces of the others, they didn't another safe zone, either.

"Well, the police station it is, then," Cindy replied with a small sense of newfound hope, shrugging her shoulders.

We slowly made our way up the stairs, Mark and David going ahead of Kevin.

The windows to the apartments were bolted shut, the residents long since gone.

The stone pathway at the top of the stairs led to a covered footbridge with a black sign above it. On the sign were the words, Raccoon Mall, and an arrow that was pointing straight forward on either side. Judging by the location, I gathered we were were directly over Main Street.

As we began to cross, we heard a symphony of groans. They were so heavy in intensity that a few of us, including myself, cringed at them. The smell was overpowering, so much so that each of us buried our mouths and noses in our arms. Tears sprung to my eyes from the stench. The worst, however, had been yet to come.

About halfway down the footbridge, Mark had started suddenly, and turned to look forwards out of the glass covering, muttering, "That smell. That's an odor I never want to experience again."

We joined him to see what he had noticed, and found ourselves regretting it.

"Dear Lord, what happened to everyone?" I asked out loud, my slowly-spoken words contrasting the speed of my pulse.

Directly below us was a massive army of walking dead, so much so that the entire portion of the street up to the footbridge's area was seemingly moving with their figures. Their vibrating figures marked them as manifestations of the flames that poured out from the rear of the crowd, and from the buildings alongside that had penned them in.

I felt myself falling forwards, and caught myself by gripping onto the railing before me as I stared blankly at the scene below. I wanted to shut to my eyes and dispel this reality, but I hadn't the ability.

"Calm down."

I turned at Kevin's voice to see him standing next to Cindy, who had tears running down her face, his hand on her shoulder. Unhappiness stabbed at me at the sight, but I pushed it away.

"This is the only way to the police station, isn't it?" David hissed. His arms were folded, and his head angled downwards.

Kevin looked over and nodded, although it was unnecessary.

"And aren't there stairs that lead down to Main Street from here?" Yoko asked hollowly.

"So we either wait here and become dinner, or run and somehow miraculously survive? Tough choice there." Alyssa's sarcasm needed work; we all heard the fearful undertones in her voice.

"Um, I think I'll just—"

"Jim, think carefully about that last word. It'll be the last one you'll say," David threatened, his annoyance apparent.

"Well, I don't know about any of you, but I want to get out alive." At that, Mark continued down the way. The others began to follow after him, though some less confidently.

Cindy was among those few.

I called her back.

Placing my hands on her shoulders, I waited until she met my gaze. "I'm going to tell you something important. I'm just as scared as you are, but I, as well as you, can't afford for that fear to take over either of us."

Cindy slowly nodded, wiping away what remained of her tears. "Let's go."

As she started off again, I stopped her. "Hand me your blue herbs. I can mix those into recovery medicines. And be careful down there."

When we made it down to the street's level, Jim ran over to us, toting a handgun. "Where the hell were you two? Look, here's the deal. See that cop over there?"

He indicated a policeman standing near a series of roadblocks stretching down the road's width. Yoko was standing nearby, defending him with her spear. He was holding onto his bleeding left side.

"He says that he and two others had set an explosive to blow these freaks sky high, but it broke in half and got scattered when the other two got killed. Now we gotta find the pieces, and put it back together."

"Okay, I'll take care of him while you help the others," Cindy volunteered before making a beeline for the officer.

"You go ahead first, Doc. Your gun has more kick to it than mine does."

"To tell the truth, Jim, it feels like I'm holding a peashooter right now," I replied as I started onto the street.

The heat pressed on my face. It felt like sitting in front of an oven. The stench was worse in how it was so overpowering that it made me stagger slightly on the first few steps I took.

My tear-filled eyes took in the vision of Kevin, his teeth gritted while he fired his shotgun against a small group of zombies that were heading straight toward him down the middle of the street. He let out a laugh as they fell to the ground.

On the left side of the street, David forced a shambling corpse backwards as Alyssa bent to pick up an object on the ground.

On the right side, Mark was heading towards the base of a streetlight. Jim was on his way to join him.

"I think Alyssa found one of the pieces!" I called out as I joined Kevin.

He swung his head around. "Sounds good, but we aren't out of the woods yet. The fuse for the explosive charge is up ahead, and it's surrounded. If we don't put the charge there, we aren't gonna be seeing any fireworks!"

I moved further to the left, and fired on two zombies that were approaching at an alarmingly fast rate. They were in the guise of two well-built high school students, with one of them even sporting a blood-spattered Raccoon High Athletics t-shirt. The gun's force was so powerful that they were easily brought to their knees before hitting the ground face first. The recoil sent me flying backwards a little.

"Gotta watch that!" Kevin called over his shoulder as he continued on to the right.

I cocked the shotgun. Six rounds were left in the weapon, and hundreds of zombies were left standing.

I felt guilt hit me as I stepped past the two fallen bodies. Youth cut down in its prime, just like the young man with the bad heart. I shook my head to remove the thought. No, there was a difference. He had been a human being still, while these two had lost their humanity long ago. The fresh blood around the still-parted mouth of one was evidence of that.

I should have kept my gaze down when I heard the sporadic clicking of high heels coming my way. I should have just kept firing nonchalantly. But I didn't.

When I looked up, my eyes stretched wide, and I froze.

There she was, her black hair still parted perfectly to the side, even though some of it had fallen out, leaving open gashes and broken scabs that were oozing blood and pus. Her dark brown eyes were glazed completely, giving the impression that she was in her own world. Her skin was sheet white, her open mouth a bright red from the consumption of blood. Her dark blue dress was tattered and stained with the disgusting liquids coming from her hair. Her thin, seemingly fragile figure teetered precariously in her step, as if half-ready to fall. All the while she kept her long, slashed arms extended toward me, the blood trailing off of them. She wasn't fragile at all, unlike her appearance suggested. She was a driven individual, always set on getting what she wanted.

She was Ruth, my ex-wife.

I felt emotional tears running down my face as she came ever closer to me, and struggled to turn the gun toward her. I hated her for what she did to me. This fate was fitting for her.

But at the same time, I couldn't do it because I couldn't deny the simple truth that I still loved her.

Her hands fastened themselves around my shoulders.

But was it worth allowing her to take my life?

As she moved her head slowly toward the vein in my neck, the rank smell her body gave off invaded my nostrils, bringing me back to reality.

Resolving not to resign myself to the same fate as she, I shoved her off, and cocked the shotgun again. I saw her for what she truly was down the barrel: the pathetic remains of a lecherous woman that had unfeelingly caused me so much pain.

The image of her wedding ring hitting the floor on that horrible night flashed before my eyes as I took a shot, and the zombie fell flat on her face.

"You idiot! Do you have any idea how close you were to being killed?" Alyssa screamed shrilly as she ran up next to me. She looked poised to hit me as she did Kevin.

David moved on by her with the piece she had found to meet Mark, who had the other, at the body of a mutilated officer with a set of wires near his body. The area was clear.

I looked her square in the face and replied, "You would be doing the same thing if it was your ex."

Alyssa's expression softened, and she nodded, but didn't give an apology. Instead, she just walked away.

I didn't care because that hadn't been the purpose of that retort, rather, I had wanted to declare Ruth dead to me as simply writing her off to someone I barely knew.

It worked. I felt a great weight leaving my shoulders as Mark set off the explosives.

I wiped my face with my arm as the street before us was blown to pieces, and its hateful occupants were thrown every which way onto buildings, the street itself, and each other.

When the last of the explosions subsided, I uncovered my eyes, and let out a sigh. The zombies' pulverized body parts lay in crimson heaps, as if they had never been connected to start with. Craters made the street impassable. Chunks of buildings lay on the street along with the organic remains. Above, some of the bodies hung out of broken window panes.

I heard the others celebrating nearby, but felt no desire to do so as I began to walk away, stepping deftly over Ruth's body. The cold began creeping into my clothes once more.

"George!"

I turned to see Cindy running over to me.

"Thank you," she whispered, and indicated the police officer that she had healed was standing up healthily near Kevin.

I smiled at the sight.

Noticing the dark stain on my jacket from where I had come dangerously close to meeting my end, she gasped. "Are you okay?"

I nodded. "You needn't worry, although I do think you are better at following my instructions than I am."

Cindy hugged herself, an action which, despite the cold, I hadn't seen her do until then. I wanted to put an arm around her, but that would seem too intimate. Sharing a wet jacket was also out of the question. "Then I hope for everyone's sake, especially yours, that that changes."

She turned back to look at the decimated street. "Even after all that, sunrise is a long way off, isn't it?"

In a drained voice, I replied, "Yes."


	3. Part III

The doctor going mad and breaking out the zombies and leeches is a tribute to the researcher going mad and breaking out the sharks in Resident Evil 1. I own nothing.

* * *

After the destruction of Main Street, continuing on towards the police station was a cruel punishment. We were drained, both physically and emotionally, and yet we still had several blocks to go.

The groaning and complaining ensued, but in the end we realized that the police station was our only option.

That was, until we had heard a high-pitched shriek from the footbridge above.

"THE HELL IS THAT?" Kevin screamed, his hands over his ears.

When the cry receded, an amplified voice followed. "Up here!"

It was Dorian, once again using his bullhorn. "I just received word that it is too dangerous to go to the station. The zombies are now heading in this direction. We have to hurry!"

"Wait a minute, wait a minute! You told us to go this way, meanwhile you conveniently left out the fact that there was a detonation system down here! That's kind of important, don't you think?" Alyssa exclaimed, putting her hands on her hips.

It was Harry's turn to supply an answer. He was the police officer that Cindy and Yoko had previously assisted. "Look, Eric, Elliott, and I got told to do it spur-of-the-moment when our patrol noticed how many zombies there were on Main Street. The report about it was supposed to get sent out as soon as possible!" Harry's words were half-running together, and his hands were shaking slightly.

"How reassuring," David muttered sarcastically.

"I don't know about you guys, but I'm not too big on this idea." Jim began backing up.

Cindy walked over to Kevin and Harry, and placed a hand on Kevin's shoulder. "Well, I'll go. What choice do we have?"

"I'm going too."

"You're serious, Mark?" David questioned.

The security guard shrugged. "It's obvious things're falling apart. We're going to need to take every chance we can get."

"Even when the chance leaves out important details?" Alyssa pressed.

Fed up with her behavior, I turned on her. "Don't be so quick to judge! Can you fit it through your thick skull that too many variables are springing up for the police to account for? As a matter of fact, you didn't know what in the world was going on at least an hour ago!"

At that, I joined Kevin, Cindy, Mark, and Harry.

Alyssa uttered something vulgar at my back.

Yoko joined us afterwards, with Jim following along hesitantly.

"Well, you coming or not?" Mark barked at David and Alyssa.

The reporter took a comparative look between the remains of the street and us. With a sigh, she finally stepped in our direction.

David, however, remained rooted to the spot, folding his arms. I thought for a moment that we would not be seeing him again.

In the end, he took his steps toward our group, and we in turn took the stairs up to Dorian's location.

XXXXXX

Dorian took us to Raccoon High School, which had been converted into a sort of shelter for the survivors. It had been cleared of zombies by the school security. Still, the image of the undead student I had gunned down in self-defense was not able to leave my mind.

Unfortunately, the school was only for temporary use. The vast majority of the its rooms were taken up as field headquarters for the police, EMT's, and firemen, leaving only the gym, cafeteria, and auditorium open. Since the cafeteria was on the second floor, it was closed in order to move the civilians out quickly when the time was to come. It would soon be filled with much-needed equipment. The auditorium was for wounded survivors.

We piled out onto the parking lot's pavement, and just as quickly hugged the side of the armored vehicle to stay away from the confusion. Vehicles, civilian and otherwise, quickly filled the parking lot at such an alarming rate that several nearly collided with one another, or with the officers that were trying to direct traffic. Sirens wailed, and flashes of blue-and-red threw their colors over each of us.

The pedestrian traffic was far worse. Screams added to the noise of the sirens. Civilians were been scrambling over the sawhorses, and even knocking a few down. Officers with riot shields were trying to herd them together into an orderly fashion, but failed from the sheer number. I saw a few fall down and nearly be trampled or hit by vehicles, but running to help them was out of the question.

A large group of ambulances was parked nearby, and the paramedics were hauling out the patients as quickly as they could. A shiver went up my spine as I thought of how many of those victims had endured bites.

A booming yell rang out. "Geldman!"

Harry's head had whipped around, and we followed his movement to see three officers waving him over.

With a nervous look at us, he ran off to join them. Kevin impulsively reached out a hand to stop him, but dropped it just as fast, spitting on the ground in disgust.

My heart sunk. I flicked my gaze between my group and the scene before us. It was obvious that help was needed, but at the same time, I didn't to leave those who were with me. Without them, I would not have left the bar alive, let alone come this far.

That's when I noticed that Kevin and Mark were doing the exact same thing. I hadn't known the others as well as they had (save Yoko). They had even more of an initiative to stay.

"Enough!" Our attention was brought to Dorian, who had folded his arms with an irritated expression.

"Ryman, I'm only doing this because I owe you one," he growled as he retreated to the vehicle's cab.

"What's he doing?" I asked, leaning in towards Kevin. The others had stood in perplexed silence for a moment.

For a short while, he was silent, but when he saw his fellow officer reaching for something along the cab's floor, Kevin replied, "He's keeping us together."

Dorian had then returned with three bandanas, each colored in blue, hanging from his left hand, and addressed Kevin, Mark, and me directly. "The three of you put these on, and give me any work-related identification. I'll stamp those. That way, you'll have passes to say that you are to guard this group. If there are any medical employees with you, and no one is injured in your group, he will have to help tend to the wounded in the building for a set amount of time until he may rejoin you. Rest assured, it will be in a decent amount of time for him to rejuvenate."

Mark looked disbelieving. I didn't blame him, given the circumstances.

While I hesitated, Kevin took out his ID and showed it to Dorian, who took it immediately. A look passed between them.

"You're not really falling for this, are you?" Alyssa called out in disbelief.

"Well, I don't have a choice, do I?" He responded, tying the bandana around his left arm and looking over at me, "Your turn, George."

I reached into my pocket, and took out my own card. I felt worried as the officer took it. Not only could he use it against me, but if had kept it, I would have denied access to the hospital.

With an exasperated sigh, Mark finally handed over his identification.

As Dorian walked back toward the cab, David followed after him just to make sure that he had not been lying.

"Looks like you'll be busy, bro," Jim observed as we saw two more ambulances pull in.

I tried to brush it off by focusing my attention on pulling the bandana tight around my sleeve. "It's all right. I can handle it."

"Still, we have to do something for you. We need you," Yoko added.

"Well, we'll just have to find him something," Cindy replied decisively. Yoko and Jim nodded at that.

Before I was given the chance to say that the extra effort wasn't necessary, Dorian, with a slightly aggravated expression from David's presence, returned with the cards.

"Speak with those two officers near that police car. They'll lead you to your assigned area, Doctor Hamilton." He gestured to a space across the lot and about four spaces down, just near the entrance. It had become a bit of an obstacle course from the people crowding the area.

I gave my group one last look over my shoulder before leaving. Each of them was completely exhausted, their features highlighted in the flashes. Still, they dutifully watched me go, though some had been more or less positive in their expressions than others.

"Be careful!" I heard Cindy call after me as I hugged my shotgun tightly to myself, and plunged into the sea of people.

XXXXXX

After confiscating my weapon and promising to return it, the officers led me into the auditorium, which had been converted into a sort of makeshift hospital. Surgical curtains, gurneys, tools, and stretchers littered the stage and the orchestra pit below. The sets had long since been removed for extra space. The spotlights were beating down on the area from above, transforming it into an operating theater.

I donned an operating uniform over my regular clothes, and got to work as soon as I could. Removing the bandana, I tied it around the scrub's sleeve. Luckily, I knew a few people in the team I had been placed with, so we worked together easier.

Still, I felt tired, more so than before, and found it harder and harder to keep going. But then again, so had the others. Clementine, my assistant surgeon, nearly tripped over a cord while moving to change her gloves.

The air was filled with a sense of urgency, the victims' wounds becoming more and more serious, several of them being bites like I had suspected. As soon as we cleaned them up, the authorities took them to be quarantined. The screaming and writhing could not be stopped, since we hadn't had enough anesthetic to prevent it. There hadn't been time for idle talk, but I saw in their body language that each and every one of these people, although dutifully working, were terrified. So was I.

With each new patient that was placed on the table before me, a gruesome image to reflect his or her pain had appeared in my mind; Will's neck being torn, Raymond being scalped, Ruth's rotting body shuffling toward me… But I batted each away by thinking of my fellow survivors. I at least had them to go to.

Suddenly, it was all over. Policemen came and broke us up for a shift change, and we took the down time to clean ourselves. An officer noticed my bandana, and checked my ID card accordingly. Before I could even have thought of saying good-bye, he whisked me away.

The gym was crowded, with people lying down, standing up, or leaning against the walls.

The officer shoved my shotgun back into my hands, and with it was my card. After pocketing the latter, I gripped the former so hard that my knuckles had turned white. It was half to keep myself awake, and half to make myself realize that it wasn't a scalpel.

Many of the groups he led me by had weapons of their own, along with small amounts of food and water. At their feet sat blankets, pillows, jackets, and sleeping bags. Their ages and numbers varied, though I didn't see any children or elders among them. A few uniformed people had bandanas in different colors than mine, and exchanged knowing glances with me.

The walk dragged, and I felt the room spin slightly before me. The room had no windows, so I couldn't tell whether it was day or night.

Finally, we came to a back corner where the others were. Upon seeing them, I tried to speak, but all that came out was a muffled sound.

I felt a hand forcefully steadying me, and looked over to see Kevin holding me up. "Easy there."

He gently lowered me down to sit on top of a sleeping bag, one of four. The officer that had led me there was gone.

"Jesus, they took his strength right out of him!" David exclaimed.

I groaned, feeling the sound smack against my lowered skull.

"That's it. Next time, we make our own way," Mark hissed in anger.

"George, you can let go now. Nothing's going to hurt you." I saw Yoko's hand near mine on the shotgun, and gratefully let it go for her to slide it out of my hands.

"The problem is, where do we go?" Kevin asked, "I know a few stores around here, and a few apartments. We just gotta pick one."

"We have to pick soon. This is ridiculous," Alyssa gestured toward me to enhance her words.

"Jim, you still have it?" Cindy called as softly as she could muster, given the background chatter.

"Oh yeah, here it is!" He threw something at her, which she pressed into my hands.

It was a protein bar. With a weak thank-you, I ripped it open and ate it, having realized that I hadn't had anything since that past evening.

The next thing I knew, I was on my side. Cindy's gasp indicated that I had fallen over. All I wanted to do was sleep.

"Rest up, Doc," Jim's voice began to fade away.

"Call me George."

XXXXXX

I was too exhausted to have any nightmares, not that I needed them. The hand that shook me awake brought me back into one.

It was near noon when we left the school. I felt considerably better than before, although far from perfect. My right side felt sore from my lying on it.

The night before was bizarre enough with zombies filling the city streets, but the day was worse to bear. The childhood beliefs of the monsters being dispatched by the sun were defied before our very eyes. Despite the light of the sun, our nerves had been on high alert, causing us to jump at every slight noise.

We had spent the day fending our way through. Yoko needed the space to pack whatever provisions we had in her backpack, leaving us to carry the ammo.

The out-of-place feeling never seemed to cease. It was almost as if we were transformed into wandering Roma, sans the horses and wagons, as we searched for a new place to stay.

It was during this time that I had gotten to know the others better, particularly Kevin and Cindy.

Kevin and I had found allies in one another on Main Street, and that was strengthened by our experiences down the line. Other than Alyssa, he was the first to learn of my divorce, the fact being that he had been enduring his own relationship problems (along with a few other issues). We usually partnered together when a zombie or looter appeared.

Cindy was never far from us, half because she was good friends with Kevin, and half because I relied on her herbs. Besides, I had enjoyed her company. After I asked her about it, she explained that her affinity for herbs was because of her wanting to be a nurse. She smiled sadly as she told me that, and I understood that we were each facing our own broken dreams.

When I told her about Ruth and myself, she gravely offered her condolences, and reached out for my hand, only to retract it with a polite blush. I offered mine to her, and she took it with a needless apology.

The day dragged on endlessly. Bullets riddled the air, and groans resounded.

Jim salvaged a radio out of the room of an apartment by climbing in through a broken window. We tuned it to a news station that night.

The news was far from hope-bringing. We listened intently in the second floor storage area of an abandoned store to reports of rising casualties, continually failing police attempts, the Army being called in, and to top it all, a complete lockdown of Raccoon City for a few days.

I'll never forget the silence as Alyssa hswitched the radio off. In the dim lighting, we all sat or stood like little lost children, rather than adults.

With a moan, Yoko lay her head down on her folded knees.

Frantic scratching was heard as Alyssa scribbled something hard on a notepad, her teeth gritted. The word "shit" quickly followed the sound of her pencil breaking.

Kevin's "damn it" was barely audible over David punching the nearest wall.

Cindy placed her hands over her eyes, shaking her head.

Jim's lucky coin clinked as it hit the floor.

Mark folded his arms and shook his head.

I bowed my head and ran my hands through my hair, which was beginning to turn greasy. I began absent-mindedly tugging at its strands as the images of mutilated bodies danced through my mind. What on was to happen next, now that we were penned in like animals?

XXXXXX

At dusk the next day, the weakened police found us. We were making sure the Army was truly with them, and that we would not be separated when Mark began to press the issue of not forcing me to work again.

"Last time you fellas made him do that, he was barely left standing!" He bellowed.

I felt embarrassed at all of this. It was as if being a doctor was a crime to be punished for, and I was dragging my newfound friends into it with me.

Someone's hand grabbed my wrist tightly as the policeman replied, "Sir, we have to! It would be completely unfair to the other medical staff here!"

"'Medical staff?' You mean slaves?" David chimed in.

I quickly admonished him for that. His words had been doing more harm than good.

Kevin stepped in front of me as two officers came near us. "Forget it, pal. He stays with us."

His hand hovered over his pistol like it had at the bar.

Everyone else in our group clustered around me, and the grip on my wrist intensified.

Looking down, I saw that it was Cindy's.

That time, she didn't blush, and instead was hard set in her face and pose. "Don't worry, they won't take you this time."

I felt half-ready to try my luck with shouldering by Kevin in order to give myself up, but ultimately decided that it would do more harm than good if I followed through with that action.

At that moment, a scream pierced the air from the center of the policemen's camp, which we were not standing far from. "ZOMBIES!"

My surroundings changed in an instant. My surroundings became a uniform blur as I sped off, my heart beating hard against my ribs, and my shotgun held tightly against me.

A pale-yellow streak whipped alongside me. Looking over my shoulder, I realized it was Cindy's ponytail.

Shortly after, we slid to a halt behind a low wall of crates with a tarp draped above them, and peered out of the top.

The scene was gruesome. Fires started quickly from over-turned oil barrels, and the tents were the fuel. Shadows of the inhabitants inside writhed in panic for a moment, and were buried as the tents caved in. Meanwhile, a large group of zombies clad in police uniforms and civilian clothes began to push their way through obstacles.

People dashed by us in unseeing hordes.

I felt Cindy's hand laying itself gently on my shoulder, and looked over. Her saddened eyes met mine. "They were human and just..." She took a breath, "Changed, right?"

I gave a reluctant nod just as the wind picked up, whipping the flames and Cindy's hair everywhere.

"GET DOWN!"

She threw herself onto me, and we tumbled to the side as a spotlight shone down on the ground a few yards from us. Helicopter blades whirred directly above.

"Kevin, are you mad?" I yelled in aggravation, my face turning red from having Cindy's body on top of mine.

He ran over and helped her to stand. "You should be thanking me!"

He pointed after the chopper, and I gulped as I saw the military gunmen half-hanging out of it. They shot down at the zombies and humans that were confused for zombies. Further beyond, a few other choppers joined the fight.

I felt Cindy's shoulder pressing up against my chest, and placed a hand on her arm protectively. We were lucky to be alive.

"All right, we owe you," she replied, turning her head to face him, and asked worriedly, "Where're the others?"

He shook his head with a look of helpless irritation. "I saw Alyssa run off with an arm around Yoko. I guess they're somewhere. And I think Mark and Jim went off in a different direction, but I can't be sure. I didn't see David. Since you guys were the closest, I came after you."

I scanned our surroundings while he spoke, and my eyes lit upon a familiar landmark. It was a street sign the dent in the metal pole causing it to lean to the right. I remembered passing by it several occasions on my way to work, and wondering just when the city was going to have it fixed. "Let's get out of here. I know just where we can go."

XXXXXX

"Phew! We're almost there!" Cindy began to stumble in her step, but caught herself before a fall. Those high heels were clearly seeing the last of their days, and they were probably giving her feet nasty blisters as a result.

Our objective was the only fortress I knew to go to: the hospital. The glowing edifice towered on the other side a park several blocks from the over-run camp. We hadn't encountered any zombies in our path, but that hadn't been a reason to move any slower.

Our good morale was quickly dropped as the path opened into a children's playground located just across the parking lot from the hospital.

I stopped in my step immediately at the sound of a high-pitched moan, my breath catching in my throat.

Cindy and Kevin voiced my thoughts.

"No, no, this can't be!"

"Jesus, even they've got it!"

A group of six zombie children began to shuffle toward us. The first, a little girl in a filthy jumper, crept out from behind the brightly-colored sliding board. Her hands were outstretched as if she wanted to hug us, her auburn pigtails waving in the air with each slight shake of her head. Drool seeped down from her gaping mouth. She couldn't have been more than four in life.

At that moment, with those little pairs of hollow, empty eyes gaping up at me, I slung my shotgun down from the battle-ready position to my side. I just didn't have the capacity to fathom shooting those little ones, even if no life was left in them.

I pointed my toward the hospital's side door. "That's our way in! Come on!"

My shotgun became a club as I deterred the little monsters from attacking me.

Unfortunately, I didn't know my own strength. One flew too far, smacking into the merry-go-round with a sickening thud, and causing it to spin slightly.

"George, look out!"

Kevin's words came too late. I let out a scream of pain as teeth sliced into my right leg, tearing at the clothing and flesh. Blood seeped from the wound.

I threw a glance down to see the jumper-clad girl with her jaws in me. She stared emptily back up at me.

I let out a terrified scream, and blasted her head off with the shotgun.

"Hurry up!" A sharp push from Kevin started me into a run, despite the searing pain in my leg.

I halted before the door, and fumbled around in my jacket pocket for my ID card. Upon seizing it, I jammed it into the reader.

For a moment, nothing happened, and I felt ready to panic.

Much to my surprise, the green light flashed, and Kevin, Cindy and I had dashed inside, slamming the door behind us.

A startled scream met our ears, and we had each raised our weapons towards whatever had been awaiting us.

"WAIT! I'M HUMAN!" A pair of arms were raised into the air, and I was hit with the realization that I had just aimed a powerful firearm at a good friend of mine.

"Hursh," I whispered, dropping the shotgun and leaning back against the door behind me.

Cindy and Kevin joined me with sighs of relief.

"Well George, you always did know how to make an entrance," Hursh joked, his still-widened eyes not leaving our guns.

XXXXXX

"This isn't much in the way of beverages, but we manage with what we have."

With slightly puzzled glances between each other, we took the pills and water glasses off of the tray that my colleague offered us, while he in turn retrieved his own from a much smaller tray on a bedside table.

"You sure this'll work?" Kevin asked, turning the pill calculatingly around in his hand.

"It has stopped this from spreading, has it not?" Hursh reassured, raising his bandaged hand as evidence.

That, and the trust I had instilled in this man over the years, was enough for me to take the pill first.

Cindy, whose left ankle bore slash marks from one of the zombie children's fingernails, quickly followed.

With a final glance at his gift-giver, Kevin downed his.

Needless to say, this was not the ideal situation for me to reunite with Rajiv Hursh.

The pills he gave us were comprised of a mixture of green, red, and blue herbs, a sort of homemade cure by the hospital staff. Apparently, its effects were only temporary, since this was clearly not Hursh's first dose of it.

I knew what that meant, especially after having seen the complete and utter disorder in the hospital's hallways on the way up to the third floor. The hospital was far from what I had made it out to be, and I felt half ready to put my head in my hands and cry. This place had been my home, and that had been taken from me. I also bore the guilt of leading two people who trusted me to a potential death trap.

But then again, what could I have done? My city clearly had not much longer to stand, meaning that nowhere was completely safe. Still, the pain was hard to bear.

I can't remember how long we four talked amongst ourselves about all that had happened in just a few days. We had the time needed in that imperfect shelter.

Through the conversation, we learned that on the night prior, a chopper had disembarked from the hospital's roof, taking the sickest and most wounded patients with it, along with hospital employees to help them. Hursh and the remaining members of the staff had elected to stay behind to tend to the less-afflicted, as well as to be there in the case of someone asking for shelter. Members of the police force had been left with them, with the military on the way.

But the military had never arrived.

"Just flip on that television right there to see why. This epidemic is worse than we could ever have imagined."

The police had helped for a little while, until something dreadful had occurred.

"George, do you remember that area just beyond the central waiting room?"

"The one with the downed shutter?"

"Yes. There was a reason as to why we hadn't been allowed past there. It seems as if a good number of people had hidden this from us. One of the remaining doctors here had the access to the area. Apparently having gone mad, he opened the shutter, and out spilled not one, but many zombies and mutated leeches."

"LEECHES?" Kevin and Cindy exclaimed.

I got up, moved to the wash basin on the wall near the room's door, and splashed cold water over my face. I wondered who this stranger with bloodshot eyes, unkempt hair, and ragged clothing was that was staring back at me from the mirror above the basin.

"It is all right! The shutter is closed once more! Sadly, I am the only surviving member of that group because of that man's insanity. The zombies' numbers have dwindled, but the leeches have not. I fear that more are crawling through the ventilation ducts."

"So, those patients that we lost did not go back to their families." My voice sounded hoarse as I looked up.

Hursh looked down in shame. "They, and many more from the other units. This all had been going on for a matter of months under our noses."

The sound of breaking glass suddenly rung out, along with my screaming, "God damn it all!"

Cindy had ran over to me, taking the hand that had broken the mirror. Its knuckles were bleeding. "You have to calm down!"

How could I, knowing that I had been such a fool?

XXXXXX

"You guys might wanna look at this."

Kevin didn't need to say that. The moans gave it away.

I brushed past him and stared down, fighting the sob that was building in my throat. Two floors below us, and right outside, a steadily-growing horde of zombies beat hard upon the hospital's front doors. They wanted us.

"Can those doors hold up?" Kevin asked.

"They should. They and the side door are comprised of solid steel," Hursh responded, his tone squeaking slightly from his nerves.

Kevin grunted. "That wasn't what I asked."

"They can and they will," I replied, "Is that satisfactory enough?"

With a slight smile, he answered, "Yeah, I think that'll work."

"George, can you back up for a moment?" Cindy asked.

I let go of the sill, and she pulled the cord, closing the curtain. "That should make the view a little nicer."

"You have any flares around here? We could probably signal a helicopter," Kevin suggested.

Hursh's eyebrows raised. "We might."

"Well, let's start looking, then." Cindy added eagerly, placing her hair in a new ponytail from where she sat on the hospital bed.

However, as soon as she said that, the lights dimmed.

"Well, this is a hell of a day, isn't it?"

"Kevin, for once I wish Alyssa was here to make you stop talking," I replied in irritation.

XXXXXX

"See if this works," Hursh said tentatively as he pressed a button on the generator control panel.

Nothing happened.

He let out a humorless laugh. "To think that just a few nights ago, I was only wondering about how to cheer you up the following day."

I looked over at Kevin and Cindy, who were trying to rearrange the makeshift barricade in the room so that it could be easier for us to cross back over.

"It's strange when I think about it. Personal issues like that seemed to be the most important to all of us, but now that has changed."

Hursh sighed. "I know. It is unfortunate that situations as horrible as this tend to bring out the best in all of us."

"Like Clementine, Victor, Angela, Bruce, and Cassidy," I offered, naming each of our co-workers that I had worked alongside in the auditorium.

He shook his head. "I worry for them now. I can understand that their help is needed, but what are the authorities going to do, keep them as their own? They're not machines; they have rights!"

I ran a hand over my eyes. "But that is our duty. Had it not been for Kevin, Cindy, and the others, I would have stayed with them."

"Yes, and I would have sat here, a blissful dunce, while you all battle against death without me."

"Speaking of which…" I took out the handgun I still carried, and laid it on top of the panel, "You'll be needing this where we're going."

He gingerly reached out a hand and took it without another word. I knew it broke Hursh's heart to be holding a weapon. After all, he had been unarmed, despite the circumstances, when we had first encountered him.

I placed my hand comfortingly on his shoulder for a moment before letting go.

"Ah, there we go!" The power finally came back on.

I was the first to make my way back to the pair. Their handiwork had accomplished little in the amount of the time because several of the obstacles had been too heavy for only two to move.

After I got down, Hursh began to make his way over to us.

A great rattling came from a grate blocked by one of the obstacles.

Hursh started in fear.

"Come on!" I yelled. It wasn't any use; he was paralyzed with anxiety.

The grate broke, and out tumbled a sea of leeches, so strong in force that the wheeled obstacle was shoved forwards to clang into the other next to it.

"If you wanna live, you better run!" Kevin yelled.

We reached out our hands to him.

He ran toward us, and leaped on top of the obstacle.

It was wheeled as well, and rolled backwards, making him tumble over the edge with a scream.

I was half-over the obstacle when I felt Kevin and Cindy gripping onto each of my arms.

"George, it's not going to help!" Cindy screamed, pointing at the leeches.

My eyes widened as I saw that the leeches had not been a sea at all, but a "man." This "man" stood tall over Hursh, his entire body covered with hundreds of writhing gray organisms that were as big as my hand.

Shots from the handgun I had given him hit the monster, and leeches fell onto the floor from its body.

"HURSH!" I screamed, flailing against my allies.

Low moans reached our three sets of ears, and we froze, slowly turning to see an undead nurse rising on either side of us. Another was coming toward us from the other side of the room.

We were caught between Scylla and Charybdis, and I feared that unlike Odysseus and his crew, we would surely be devoured by one of them.


	4. Part IV

I wrote the part about the allegation memo while listening to Metallica's "Master of Puppets."The memo itself is a special item that can be found in Easy or Normal Mode while playing as any character.

George being offered the position of researcher was taken from the Decisions, Decisions scenario. When he ad-libs in the main hall, he mentions that he studied virus research for some time at the university. I built off of that. George's comment about just turning thirty-nine is a reference to Silent Hill. Harry says Cheryl just turned seven last month.

The hospital itself was a metaphor for a few things. The most prominent, in-game metaphor was how Umbrella did things behind the scenes while using a genuine-looking front. This only served to undermine itself and the human population. The second metaphor was for George's light and dark sides. The hospital is a place to be safe and cared for, yet there are monsters everywhere. The final metaphor is for how George's devotion to his work caused his life to deteriorate. The hospital has decayed, much like his marriage. The quote George sarcastically uses is from the Romantics poem, "Ozymandias." The quote was in a different context in the original work than it is now. The original meaning applies to Umbrella, as it as about human pride standing nothing to the powers of nature and time. The secondary meaning pertains to George, as he has built this legacy of work, but it has led to nothing. Yes, this chapter is mainly George's introspection, but it is his workplace. This is much unlike the game, where he barely comments on the hospital's state at all..

I own nothing.

* * *

"Don't just sit there, shoot!" Kevin exclaimed as he opened fire on the zombie closest to him.

I didn't know what was more chilling; the fact that the undead nurse's decayed face was just inches from me, or that I had had only one shell left in my shotgun. The others had been expended on the streets of the city, and in the playground. I needed to make my remaining shot count.

Hearing poor Hursh screaming his head off, and his body smacking off of the side wall and supply cabinets while the Leech Man tortured him threw a wrench into this, as it badly interfered with my concentration. My vision was becoming hazy with building tears at my friend's suffering.

With a quick apology to Cindy, I braced my elbow on her shoulder to steady the gun, and fired. The recoil caused us both to groan in pain, and blood from the zombie's foul face splattered us both.

Cindy turned her attention to the remaining creature. Her first shot grazed its shoulder, and the following one hit it square in the chest, but without a sufficient force to bring it down. The third, however, was enough.

A shriek of the purest terror burst out from behind the barricade, and my blood ran cold. Hursh…Hursh was going to die…

I didn't bother to ask for help. I simply switched the spent shotgun into a melee weapon by adjusting my grip on it, and began to scramble over the barricade without being inhibited.

The greatest shock, however, was the fact that I saw absolutely nothing over the top, save for the blinds rustling slightly, and the body of a doctor I didn't recognize. Hursh and his attacker had completely vanished.

The shotgun slipped out of my heads, clattering to the floor.

"What just happened?" Kevin exclaimed, grabbing my shoulder and shaking me.

"Wha—Where's Dr. Hursh?" Cindy asked in a confused voice.

I didn't mean to startle them, but I couldn't control my impulse after losing a person so close to me. I whirled around, knocking Kevin's hand off with the speed of the movement, and grabbed onto each of them by their clothing, pulling them to me.

"You're still alive…You're still here…" I whispered after a moment, releasing them.

Their apprehensive expressions fell away a few moments after.

I took a deep breath to compose myself, and half-turned away from them in shame.

Kevin gave my shoulder a soft clap to get my attention. "It's all right. We know."

I had turned back to face them, and had saw their looks of support and sympathy. For Kevin, it had been Raymond. For Cindy, it had been Will. For me, it had been Hursh.

"You okay?" Kevin asked after a moment.

I gave a chuckle in spite of myself, and shook my head. "I'm afraid I won't be for a long time."

Cindy smiled bitterly at that. "Well, we'll just have to fix that, won't we?"

With a good exertion of effort and concentration, we finally made it over the obstacles.

Our resident lawman was the first to survey the scene. He crept carefully around the small area, crouching down here and there to look more closely in some areas.

Cindy and I only managed to find the corpse of a doctor in plain view. I didn't recognize him, even after I'd read his name tag. He'd worked in radiology. No wonder. His pockets were completely turned out, as if someone had been looking for something. The fact that he had gaping wounds completely dry of blood signified that he posed no problem to us.

"Wait a moment…" She looked up at the sound of my voice, "I don't think he was lying here before."

"What do you mean?" Kevin asked suspiciously. He was crouching near the supply cabinet against the wall where the window was positioned.

I shook my head, folding my arms. Either I had been completely desensitized to seeing dead bodies already (unlikely), or I was losing my mind. I didn't want to think about the latter scenario. "I mean exactly what I just said. I don't remember seeing him here."

Kevin and Cindy looked nervous once more, and this time, I probably mirrored their expressions.

He was the first to shake his head out. "Well, sounds like another lovely myst—found the gun." It had slid underneath the cabinet.

He handed it to me a bit hesitantly after checking to see that it had been loaded. I didn't blame him, considering my outbursts, although I felt a little offended.

My eyes followed Kevin as he stood, and came to rest on a drawer. "Bingo."

The lack of power had caused me to not see it earlier, and my career had kept me well out of the elevator control room.

Rising to my feet, I yanked it open to reveal two chilled blood packs. "This should keep the monster at bay for a little while."

"Kickass!" Kevin exclaimed.

As Cindy eagerly took one, and I picked up the other, the officer continued searching the cabinet.

"Huh."

"What is it?" Cindy inquired at his gruff tone.

He pulled out a piece of paper, and handed it to me. "You might wanna look at this, George."

I tried to read his face as I took it. The result wasn't very uplifting; he looked angry, although not at me.

I quickly scanned it at first, but as the document went on, my reading became slower and slower, and whatever calm I regained was ripped away.

"Dear God…" I muttered, collapsing into the chair at the control panel, the paper slipping out of my fingers.

Cindy walked over, concerned.

I waved my hand. "Go ahead. You have my permission to read it. I need to think for a moment."

She nodded dutifully before picking it up.

I took the liberty to stare off into space, and mull over what I had just swallowed.

The text was an allegation memo of the hospital's owners accepting bribes from the global pharmaceutical company known as Umbrella to cover up not only what been occurring beyond the shutter in the waiting room, but also what had been happening underground. I hadn't known there had been a second basement built into the hospital, but it apparently was of all things, a laboratory with which to experiment on mostly animal, but sometimes human, subjects.

I had been lucky that there had been a chair to fall into. I refused to think of the full reality of it; to do otherwise would have crushed my mental state.

"It's not your fault. You hadn't known," Cindy was clearly fighting to keep her voice steady as Kevin took the paper out of her shaking hands to fully examine it.

I had smiled sadly, and nodded. "'It's strange, isn't it? The world goes to nothing, and deception such as this surfaces," after pausing a moment, I added, "I'm now doubly glad to have rejected Umbrella's offer for a job all those years ago."

"As what? A pharmacist?"

I shook my head. "There is more to the company than just producing pills. A little less than twenty years ago, I double majored in the medical and biological fields at Raccoon University. I focused the main part of my studies on viral investigation, and showed considerable promise in it. Umbrella offered me a good-paying position as a researcher, but I declined."

"Why? You were good at it," Cindy asked in surprise.

"I made my decision to stop majoring in two subjects, and chose one. The stress was too great for me. The career Umbrella wanted me to have detailed spreading different viruses to test subjects, rather than curing them. This would benefit gaining knowledge as to how a disease would affect humans, but it wasn't for me. I wanted to heal others, not kill." The irony of the ending statement made the current scene darker.

After a few moments of digesting this, Cindy had patted my hand with a soft smile. "I'm glad you chose the way you did. We wouldn't have met you."

"Same here. I can't thank you enough for all you've done," Kevin added as he handed me the paper, which I folded and placed in my jacket pocket, "Although I gotta ask, how old does that make you? You said this all happened twenty years ago."

"Kevin!" Cindy exclaimed.

I chuckled as I stood. "Well, if you must know, I turned thirty-nine a few months ago."

"You still look good," Kevin replied, "Now, we should probably get going before ol' Leechy comes back."

He spoke too soon. As we emerged from the control room, a loud banging had come from the grate above our heads. We darted inside the elevator, and mashed the button to the second floor. We held our breaths as the form of the Leech Man had stared at his meal getting away through the elevator doors.

I had closed my eyes, and said my final good-bye to Hursh.

XXXXXX

"This should be sufficient," I murmured to myself as I reloaded my handgun. We had gone into the nurse's station after disembarking from the elevator, and I had found a box of rounds lying on the shelf of an open cabinet. I supposed that one of the police officers from before had left it there, and forgotten about it.

A thump was heard as Cindy decisively threw her high heels away from her, having switched them out for a pair of nurse's shoes. "There. Now I can feel my feet."

Kevin was searching the area for useable medicine and a sharp object with which to open the blood packs. He'd asked me what a few of the bottles were on the cart across from the glass medicine cabinet, and unfortunately, I hadn't been able to determine that any of them would be useful to us, save for one of disinfectant.

He headed for the cabinet, which had plenty of bottles stacked closely together.

I walked up behind him.

"Huh. You'd think that someone would've used these earlier." Kevin mused as he slowly extended a hand toward one.

A flicker of movement in the cabinet caught my eye, and I grabbed his shoulder to yank him backwards as the glass shattered.

I hadn't been quick enough; a piece of glass struck his hip as four leeches leaped out.

With a cry, he swatted one away with his hand, causing it to hit the wall with an ugly squish.

The bottles tumbled to the floor, and easily bounced off of it. They were all empty.

"Don't let them crawl away! They'll hide again!" I yelled, stomping on one that was making a beeline for my leg. Its body jerked, and it let out a squeak.

Cindy grabbed her shoe off the floor, and brought it down on top of another of the squirming beasts.

To think that these little bastards were once used in medical procedures…

Before I could stop him, Kevin, with a hiss of pain, pulled the broken glass out of his hip, and threw it on the floor. A leech thirstily drank the blood residue on it right up, but slithered away before I could kill it.

I frantically glanced around for something that my friend could use to patch his hip wound. My eyes landed on a cart loaded with haemostatic medicine and bandages against the back wall. Kevin's guardian angel was clearly watching over him that night.

After ordering him to go over the cart, I searched for the remaining two leeches on the floor, kicking aside bottles as I went. Cindy joined me.

"GOD DAMN IT!" Kevin yelped.

We swung our heads in his direction to see him yank a leech off of his hip. The overturned medicine on the cart verified the fact that the leech had been hiding in wait behind it. Kevin brought his foot down on it just as a great rattling came from the ceiling behind Cindy and me.

The Leech Man swung out of the shaft to land on the floor. I could hear the whistling as his arm swung through the air, and half-doubled over to get out of his range.

Cindy ducked, and lunged forward, her hand out.

I spun to face the monster, and swung my empty shotgun with a grunt. It hit him hard in the chest, knocking him backwards a few steps. I braced myself as he came at me again, and swung once more. The strain on my muscle was painful, making the hit not as strong as the previous one.

The Leech Man, however, was weakened enough from the first hit to be thrown against a cabinet, and slide down to the floor in a writhing heap.

I breathed hard, taking care to roll out my shoulders as I stared at the monster.

At one point, he had been human. I could easily see a pair of shoes on his feet, and the lower halves of the legs were sheathed in pants. Leeches had completely obscured the rest of the body, save the fingers and mouth, which was gaping open.

That mouth was propelled toward me as he heaved himself up with renewed strength. It was as if I hadn't hit him at all.

I let out a cry at the sight as plastic tore from behind me.

Cindy ran over to me, and threw the opened blood pack across the room to the corner directly across from the door out.

The Leech Man practically dove for it, and the remaining leech was about to join him when I brought my foot down on it.

While our enemy was distracted, I looked around for Kevin, and saw him, his hip bound up crudely, coming toward me with two sealed blood packs.

"Let's go!"

XXXXXX

"Well, this is wonderful." Kevin muttered as we shoved the janitor's wheeled cart in front of the door to the station. It wasn't much in the way of a barrier, but it was the closest object within reach.

The Leech Man was on the same floor as us, but we still had to search the area for supplies.

The route to the surgical wing was closed off by a shutter. An undead assistant trapped on the other side pounded on it. The only part of him that could have been indentified was his set of surgical scrubs, which had been splattered with blood. His face had been morphed into a senseless, bloody mess, the remaining chunks of flesh hanging off.

I felt my stomach curl into a knot at the sight before heading down the side hallway with Kevin and Cindy. She was holding the shard of glass that she had used to open the blood pack.

"I'll need to look at that wound later," I commented.

"When there's time," Kevin replied with slight irritation.

The rattling continued in the background as a shadow fell across the corner.

We had flattened ourselves against the side wall. Kevin nodded to me as a pair of rotting hands shot forward from the side as a zombie propelled itself forward. The nurse's head was down, her hair, having fallen out of its bun, obscuring her face like a black veil.

The police man's shot to her head dropped her to the floor, but not before she banged it off the side rail of the staircase. She sprawled on the ground in a broken half-turn.

"There's only one room we can check. The rest are closed off." I iterated as I sidestepped the nurse's body to open the door.

Beyond it was complete and utter disorder. The nearest hospital bed's covers were yanked back, drawers on the nearby table were either yanked open, or lying on the floor altogether, their contents spilled everywhere, and the metal cabinet had both of its doors thrown open. The lights flickered above us. Ruffled curtain of the second bed was drawn.

"Something doesn't seem right here," Cindy muttered.

"No shit! Really?" Kevin muttered sarcastically while I went over to a drawer was lying on the floor. Inside sat what remained of a small spool of much-abused bandages.

I began to redress his wound.

With an exasperated sigh, she replied, "What I was trying to say is look how disorderly this is as compared to the cabinet in the nurses' station. While there are still supplies around here, those bottles inside had been empty. In fact, the only thing inside that was at least somewhat useful was this."

I looked up to see her holding out a piece of paper. Kevin took it, and we studied it.

It read BF2 at the top with four sets of four-digit numbers, each separated by a solid black line.

"That's…odd," I observed, "How can we decipher this?"

"Beats me." Kevin responded, shrugging, "But what did you mean about the bottles?"

"Well, remember how the majority of the station was about as messy as this room?"

"Except for the cabinet?" I asked, beginning to catch on. A chill began to run down my spine. "The leeches were behind the cabinet. Do you mean…"

She nodded slowly.

I shook my head. "Th-that's impossible. They can't be that smart."

"Smart enough to do what? Oh no, no…You're shitting me!" I quickly finished up so I was out of the way before Kevin drove his fist down through the air.

Cindy was silent for a moment, her fists clenched. "The quicker we move, the sooner we'll be away from the leeches."

At that, she began to pick through the debris for what was useable.

"I'll check around the curtain." Kevin decisively stated.

I glanced up over his head at the grate in the ceiling before nodding and assisting Cindy.

"Good deduction." I praised as I tugged a green herb out of its overturned pot. It had fallen off of the nightstand.

She smiled wryly at me while shaking a bottle of disinfectant. From the sound of it, it was half-full. "Thanks. I just wish it could've been better news."

I smiled sadly before turning my attention to underneath the bed, taking care to look before reaching under by moving the sheet. Much to my relief, I uncovered a reward for my efforts: a first aid spray. "It's a shame. This place used to be so bright, so full of life."

She emptied a capsule with a regretful look on her face. Three blue pills fell into her hand.

Kevin reentered the area with a stack of what had looked like clothes in his hands. A knife was clenched between his teeth.

Cindy and I rose to assist him, but the grate began to rattle. Kevin's eyes stretched wide.

Cindy dashed over to open the door, hopping over a few things on the floor as she did so. I moved just as quickly over to Kevin, and nearly tripped on one of the sheets. He met me halfway, and I grabbed what I could before making a break for it.

The grate fell to the floor just we crossed the threshold.

After speeding down the stairs, we took a moment to catch our breath before I directed them to the locker room. Kevin had only managed to find two sets of clothing. That was fine with me; I had some clothes of my own in the doctors' station.

Cindy was the first to enter and change. We waited as patiently as we could outside while the zombies' moans echoed from beyond the wall.

"Back where we started," Kevin muttered, jerking his thumb to the side door. Beyond that was the door to the security office. The door next to it, leading to the front lobby, was shuttered.

I sighed, holding out the paper with the numbers. "Honestly, I can't wait to leave. This second basement had better exist, otherwise we don't have a prayer of leaving."

"Hey, don't worry about it."

I glared at him. His habit of downplaying things was getting on my last nerve.

His face fell at my expression. "Look, I'm just trying to get you to stop banging your head against the wall about this. For the last goddamn time, it's not your fault!"

The conversation was cut short by a scream from inside of the locker room.

"CINDY!" We exclaimed, running inside.

Her back was to us, her hair down. One hand was quickly tugging down a blouse over her stomach, while the other was shakily aiming a gun at the female zombie that was dangerously close to her.

I managed to make out the facial features, namely the naturally sunken-in eyes, and gasped. It was Madison, an intern. She had been so young, and had looked so forward to graduating from nursing school…Cindy, even though she didn't know it, was facing off against what she so wanted to be.

Her shot missed due to nerves, and she cried out in pain as Madison's nails scratched her face.

Acting on impulse, I grabbed her by the waist, yanking her back.

Kevin took advantage of the situation by ramming knife right between the undead woman's eyes. She crumpled to the ground, the blood gushing out of the wound to completely mask her face.

I tightened my grip slightly on the waitress while watching the scene, and felt a sharp pang of pity for the murdered girl.

"She came out of a locker…" Cindy murmured while picking up the pants she had meant to change into off of the bench.

I let go of her, and self-consciously cleared my throat.

"Oh great, zombies can now hide too. What'll they think of next?" Kevin groaned, putting his hands on his head. An all-too-familiar pounding from above us began

"Security office!" I exclaimed before grabbing the handle on the door.

It was aflame.

Not only was a good portion of the room being incinerated; the guard himself was! His position was still identifiable because his uniform was only partially singed at the moment; he had fallen into the fire quite recently.

The jingling of the keys at his belt was eerie noise against the crackling of the fire.

I, being the closest one to him, had to do away with him. Calling out to Kevin and Cindy to get out of the way, I swung the shotgun at him, and let go. Given the abuse it had gone through earlier, I doubted it would fire again.

The guard wasn't a well-built man by any standards, and his girth easily brought him down.

It was then that I saw the words that had been etched into the wall as if by the teeth of keys (probably his). FIRE NO LE—the rest was unable to be read.

Kevin brushed by me with an extinguisher while Cindy took a look at the control panel. "This button opens the shutter to the lobby. Should we press it?"

I was about to say no due to the location of the zombies, but I stopped myself. There were a few vending machines in the lobby, and we would need to have something to keep us going.

I nodded, and she did so as Kevin completed his task.

XXXXXX

The lobby was rather short in edible quantities. The most we found was a can of tomato juice, and a few bags of chips.

The side doors to the waiting room were accessible, but after hearing Hursh's dark tale, we had decided to skirt them altogether.

That left the office, which was a different story.

Water was dripping from a series of leaking pipes into the two sinks of the room, creating puddles that leeches were living and breeding in. We had to watch our feet, and our hands, since they also took to crawling on the countertops. As compared to the previous, orderly version of the room, this was a complete disgrace.

I picked up a phone book, and smashed one of the creepy crawlers with it. The phone it was next to had fallen off the hook, its cord trailing over the desk, and its dial tone droning.

"Get away!" Cindy exclaimed, swatting a leech off of a paper with her pistol. She lifted it, and called out, "This says BF—ack!"

Another leech hopped onto her shoulder, and she flew into a frenzy to get rid of it. Kevin, who was the closest, took care of it for her.

I should have moved. I should have noticed the proximity of the grate. Instead, I was too distracted by Cindy, and as a result, the creaking of the grate came from a few feet to the right of me.

I broke into a mad run to get away from it, but forgot that the floor was covered in water. As a result, I slipped, and crashed to the floor, smacking my arm off the island table. The phone book tumbled down alongside me. I hissed in pain, felt the water soaking into my clothes and hair, and heard the Leech Man coming for his new victim.

"Shit!"

I scrabbled on the floor to get up, all the while trying to put the pain in my arm in the back of my mind. My hand hit the phone book, and something else on top of it…

I yelped as the leech crawled onto my hand, and after a sharp bite, began to drink.

The moment after, Kevin fastened his hands under my shoulders, and pulled up.

"HEY!" Cindy yelled, kicking the table to get the greater adversary's attention while I knocked the leech off of my hand. She placed an open blood pack on the table, which the Leech Man dove for, knocking whatever was on it to the floor to shatter.

Even after we closed the door to the doctors' station and locked it, I still felt like a fool. I used the disinfectant on the top of my hand. Cindy offered me a blue pill, which I gratefully took with the knowledge that my body had acquired quite a few bruises.

There wasn't much to say. An apology from me was accepted, and that was that. It was up to me to learn to keep my head. There wasn't scorn on my friends' faces, rather disappointment. It was a far cry from some of my previous actions.

"I'll check my locker," I stated to change the subject.

On my way over there, I stumbled across a rather disturbing discovery: Dr. Onegin, a mutual acquaintance I'd had with Hursh, was splayed across the small couch on his stomach, a gash in his back. His lungs were crushed, the back of his head caved in. I identified his features from his head being up on the couch's arm, and shook my head. This place was turning more and more from a hospital into a slaughter house.

Some of the lockers were protruding open, their contents stolen. The police's forced entry weapon, a bloody crowbar, was lying on the floor before the row.

I had turned and called, "Careful! There's another body in here!"

They nodded, and I turned to check my locker.

It was a complete and utter invasion of my privacy, not that I could have done anything about that at that point. The door was practically been torn off, the few pictures inside torn beyond recognition from frantic searching. All that had remained were the clothes, and they had been rumpled every which way.

I bent down to pick up the crowbar when a hoarse moan erupted from the nearby.

I turned to see an undead police man rising from behind the table, his back soaked with blood. Kevin aimed his gun to fire at him, but the look of shock on his face indicated that it was empty. So instead, he resorted to pistol whipping the undead officer, which sent him backwards a few steps.

Crowbar and clothes in my hands, I started forwards. There wasn't anything else worth finding on the first floor, so it was time to leave.

"Cindy, call the elevator!"

She had a blue herb clenched tightly in her hands. Nodding, she briskly went over to hit the button.

Taking care to keep my eyes averted from Onegin's remains, I joined her inside of the elevator, which she was holding open with a hand in front of the doors. Kevin caught up, and the doors closed with a quick pressing of a button just before the zombie was able to stumble inside.

Kevin's eyes met mine. I sighed before putting on a stronger expression. He was right earlier; I had to stop taking this out on myself.

"All right, I'm guessing from these two papers that we have to add these four sets of digits to this one set right here. I still have the pencil from my uniform." Cindy held out the papers as she spoke. Looking over her shoulder, I saw that the only text on the secondary paper was BF2, a plus sign, and the four-digit number set.

"So, we figure out which one to use. The elevator predestination room is on the floor below," I stated.

"Seeing as how we don't have a calculator, and we still have to check the rest of this floor, we should probably split up. Two of us can work on the numbers and input them," Kevin paused, looking at me before he added, "Depending on how many areas there are on this floor, someone should check them. The other two won't be too far off."

"Then come with me," I responded, "There's really only one other room to check, and it has no ventilation ducts. I'd rather steer clear of the reposing room."

Kevin looked like I'd handed him a bar of solid gold.

The elevator doors opened, and I stepped out to point at the door on our left. "There's the predestination room."

To make sure that the room we as doctors had learned to both dread and accept was locked, I tried the bloodied handle after wrapping my sleeve around my hand. It thankfully didn't budge.

A disquieting pounding sounded off in the distance, the hallway ending in the door that only my keycard could open.

"Oh, fun part," Kevin commented with a groan, heading down.

Cindy stayed at my side as the pounding grew louder with the distance gained. I felt her brush up against me. "Do you think the others are all right?" She asked.

I thought for a moment. "If they have adapted to their environments like we have, they are. I personally believe that they have the potential to do so."

She nodded with a small smile.

A sharp clang rang out, and a zombie police man exited from behind the chain link fence guarding a small storage area.

A nicely-aimed kick by Kevin knocked him back inside, and gave me room to swipe my card in the reader.

While Cindy and Kevin busied themselves with adding the numbers, I changed my clothes. I wished that I had placed more practical clothing in my locker, seeing as how a dress shirt and pants didn't hold much difference from my previous outfit.

Once I finished, I grabbed the red herb off the ground. We had the ingredients needed for an anti-virus pill, but what stopped me from creating them was the unpredictable nature of our plight.

"Okay, that's it. We have to put these codes in one at a time, don't we?" Kevin's question made me want to refuse to answer, although that wasn't a choice.

I nodded, and he grunted. " much as I'm grateful that ol' Leechy won't be breathing down my back here, I think you should stay."

The embarrassment in the office replayed in my mind's eye, and I resisted the urge to slap a hand to my head. Instead, I settled for agreeing with him.

Kevin handed me a blood pack. "Meet us in the second basement."

"Will do." I moved to take the pack out of his hand, but he held it tightly. It dawned on me how large the separation might have been.

Kevin gave me a salute by placing two fingers to the side of his head. "See ya soon, Doc."

I laughed in spite of the situation at his overt foolishness.

After the door closed behind him, Cindy lingered still. She appeared as if she wanted to say something to me.

Oddly enough, rather than speaking, she placed her lips against my cheek.

Heat exploded inside of me from the kiss. I took her hand for a moment, and then it slipped away.

I forcibly stopped the loneliness from overtaking me as I carefully made my way through the rest of the room. The body of a nurse greeted me as I rounded the bend. The fact that it was stirring caused me to move more quickly.

The waste liquid disposal room beyond the door was the perfect breeding ground for the leeches. They crawled around (and possibly swam in) the barrels of waste fluid. They had been a great thorn in the side of the hospital recently due to the number of patients we had lost. I guessed from the allegation memo was that their failure to be removed had been caused by a dispute between the hospital and Umbrella.

In the low light, I spotted a box of handgun rounds within a coiled rubber cable. Remembering the events at the nurses' station, I chose to fire on it first. A leech within in turn let out a cry. After taking care to fire one or two more shots, I grabbed the rounds, and reloaded. The squishy crawling noises continued to echo all around me, and I hoped to not remain much longer in the room.

After clearing the stairs, I thought twice before hopping into the small channel of water. Instead, I braced my shoulder against a stack of boxes, and pushed them in. A strong metal rod followed. It wasn't much of a bridge, but it would have to do.

After carefully picking my way across, I leapt onto the adjoining path, and landed with a grunt. The body of a doctor sprawled on his stomach greeted me. I slowly came toward the body, but found I didn't need to worry over it reanimating; the leeches had done away with his supply of blood.

As I came closer, my footsteps uneven, I saw a glint of silver on the ground near his hand. I didn't want to cut the body to pieces with bullet holes, so instead I chose to flip it over with the crowbar. A few leeches still clung to the body, and I dispatched them with my melee weapon. Once they were finished, I realized just who the owner of this shell was.

He was Dr. Martin Skinner, the chief of staff. Lying just before his hand was a key ring with only one key on it. Picking it up, I found that BF2 was engraved on it.

I suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to hack into my boss's body, but resisted it. I had respected this man for years; he'd always made sure the hospital (until recently, it seemed) had been running efficiently, its staff members taken care of. I had to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Instead, I resorted to turning my back on him. I wasn't going to deface him further, but that didn't mean I didn't have some amount of rage bottled in me, whether or not Skinner deserved having it aimed in his direction.

XXXXXX

I slowly stepped out of the elevator onto the second basement floor. It appeared to be a clone of the floor above, with one door directly before me, and another at the end of the hall.

"Kevin? Cindy?" I called.

When no response came, I tried the door. It gave easily.

Beyond the door was an abandoned laboratory. It was a complete mess. Papers were flung on the floor. Books were strewn all over the desks. Lab equipment either hung uselessly from the ceiling, or lay in disarray all over the room.

The remains of a few zombies lay on the floor, their brains splattered on the tile. About two were in casual clothes, while another pair was clad in lab coats.

Rage built up inside of me, and that time, I lacerated the bodies. I broke the jaw of the first, and watched the blood run down his chin onto his already-stained coat. I barely resisted the urge to retch at the sight. I smashed the hands of the second, and stared at the harshly displaced digits that had been her fingers. Their black and blue marks were frighteningly gruesome.

The crowbar slipped out of my hand, and clattered to the floor while I fell to my knees. My hands wrapped around my throat for a moment before I threw up.

Moments passed, and I knew that I had to move.

I cleaned myself up, rose, and walked to the door, my entire body shaking.

Somehow I managed to get it open.

"George! You made it!" Kevin dashed over to me.

At what was most likely a dreadful expression I wore, his face fell, and he looked ready to ask me if I was all right.

"Thank God!" Cindy exclaimed as she came over. She openly grinned at me, but that grew strained upon seeing how I looked.

"What's wrong? You look so pale."

I shook my head. "It's overwhelming to see this laboratory, even after all the documentation about it."

The two gave me understanding looks. Under them, they looked ready to say something.

Kevin held out a much-rumpled paper to me. "You're not alone. This says that not only the hospital was in on the business, but the police station was as well." His was strained, and anger flashed in his eyes.

"What?"

"The Chief…He was bribed to turn a blind eye to what was happening," Cindy supplied, her voice quivering.

I blinked for a moment. Before I could even consider absorbing this, I laid a hand on Kevin's shoulder, and whispered, "I'm so sorry."

He looked ready to snap at me, but reconsidered. Instead, he replied in a controlled tone, "Thanks."

I looked past him to inspect the area, which consisted of a control panel in a small hallway in which we were standing. The door at the end, closed at the moment with a grate directly above, had a room full of shelves beyond it. The second room was plainly displayed by the glass window.

Cindy saw me looking around, and explained, "That panel controls the temperature in the next room. Kevin and I were thinking that if we could trap the Leech Man inside, we can burn him. The problem is, we don't have a blood pack anymore."

I smiled, pulling out the blood pack. "You're in luck. I'll place it inside."

"I'll go with you in case something happens," she replied, "Kevin, will you operate the controls?"

"You sure you don't want me to go?" He asked.

She shook her head. "No, I'll be fine. You held him—it—back when I helped to input the code again. Now, I'll repay you for that."

After a moment, he nodded. "Okay."

I raised my hand to push the door open, but it slid aside for me.

"It's hard to imagine that we'll be rid of this abomination," I commented while dumping the blood onto the floor.

"I'm sorry if this sounds too optimistic, but we'll have that at the very least." She replied, wiping the sweat off her face with the back of her hand.

She didn't smile that time. She looked tired, her expression substantially darkened. I probably looked the worse, but we still conversed with one another.

A harsh banging sounded, and the grate swung open.

Kevin glanced up for a moment, and seemed to eye up the creature, holding his ground. I took the time to stand, and walk away from the pack. Cindy, holding what seemed to be of all things, a crutch, stood before me. I took care to pull my pistol out, and wished that I hadn't discarded my crowbar.

When his gaze fell, I knew that the monster's attention was diverted in our direction. We shuffled forward with precision.

The door slid open. Even though we had been prepared for it, we were still jumped.

The Leech Man completely ignored us as he slogged by, bent down, and began to drink.

We broke into a run, my eyes focused on Cindy's blonde hair waving back and forth. As long as I had stayed close to that, I was fine.

Before I knew it, the door closed behind us, and Kevin slammed his hand down on the button, whooping in victory.

Cindy and I, however, were more focused on catching our breaths. I almost threw my arms around her, having felt a little closer to her from before, but I resisted the urge.

"Kevin!" I called out hoarsely, "Is there any way to tone down the temperature?"

He stared at me for a little while, but realization dawned on his face afterwards. "Yeah, hang on."

I didn't expect what was beyond that door. Those infernal leeches had been destroyed, leaving the husk they had inhabited bare. Its face…It was that of my dear friend, Hursh, his eyes and mouth gaping wide open, creating a mask of a man betrayed.

My head hit the wall behind me as tears began to flow. For that moment, I felt guilt wash over me. It didn't mattered that he was already dead, or that I hadn't had a single chance at preventing his death. For just that while, it was almost as if he had been slain by my hand.

"Oh my God…" Cindy whispered.

I dropped my hands to see her examining the body, her hands clasped together. She turned to me, a regretful look on her face. "I had you…I…I didn't know!" Tears streamed down her face at her own guilt, although it was as needlessly attached to her as mine was to myself.

That time, I embraced her, if only for a moment to show that I had placed no blame on her.

"Jesus Christ…I'm so sorry..." Kevin hung his head in shame, his fists clenched.

I went over to him, and sighed. "You do know I don't hold you responsible for this."

He looked up after I said that, locking his gaze with mine. "Thanks, but that will only go so far."

I wanted to say that I had knew, but I decided against it. Instead, I held out my hand. "Then allow me to accompany you the rest of the way."

After a pause, he took it. "All right."

The tone soon afterwards shifted from miserable to dark.

Grimacing, I had swiped the card in its reader, unlocking the door at the end of the hallway. We had found it on Hursh's body, and speculated the leeches had absorbed it as they had absorbed their host, but it still didn't take away the bitter taste in my mouth. I was through with this place, having seen far more of its hidden side than I would ever have desired.

The room beyond was equipped with supplies, much to our satisfaction. A shelf held a first-aid spray, and a potted green herb had been against the far wall. A barrel held two sets of handgun rounds.

Kevin laid claim to the rounds immediately, having found a burst handgun in the laboratory inside a drawer that he'd had to force open. The weapon still made my skin crawl. Even he hated holding it, choosing to holster it most of the time. Cindy told me that she had found the crutch in the same room. Cane and carrot for the test subjects, despicable!

The most uplifting feature of the room was an outboard, its gas gauge full, sitting on a path of water leading to the sewer. It was chained to a spare fuel supply, and the key I had found released the lock. My misgivings about Dr. Skinner, however, had yet to be dismissed. I both liked and loathed the fact that we would never have learned the entire story of the hospital's downfall.

Cindy took the chance to mix the three herbs we collected.

After we finished checking to make sure we were ready, we climbed into the boat, taking the fuel supply as a precaution.

Kevin tugged hard on the cord, and we were off.

The sewer sped by in a blur, and I leaned back to relax somewhat. I didn't consider this a gateway to freedom, rather a short break. After all that had happened, I would have been unintelligent to think otherwise. Kevin wiped his brow with the back of his hand, while Cindy hugged her bent knees to herself.

I had thought well for the situation, for before we knew it, a gigantic wall of leeches grew large in our path as we neared it.

Fear seized us. We grabbed whatever we could, and jumped off the boat, landing in the cold water. We watched in horror as the boat smashed into the wall, and went flying. Flames started from the engine, burning the leeches. Though the fire got rid of them, it left us without transportation.

Needless to say, that was the least of our problems, as a gigantic leech rose from the flames. Water spewed from its tree trunk of an esophagus, while it bounced forward on its over-sized bulb of a body.

The jump was difficult to recover from, given the fact that it was off a vehicle moving at well over fifty miles an hour.

Kevin was the first to get up. He was holding the fuel source. "Well, looks like we woke up Mama!"

He hadn't time to say much else before the massive leech angled itself parallel to the floor, and pushed itself toward us with high speed.

Cindy jumped up at the sight, and I stood bolt upright.

The next moment, the leech's body collided with the three of us, sending us to the floor.

Water filled my lungs. My hands pushed down onto the concrete floor beneath as I heaved my body up, gasping for air and violently coughing.

Kevin's hand waved before me. "Back up!"

Cindy grabbed onto my shoulder. "We have to go!"

I was ready to protest against leaving Kevin by himself until I saw that he had deposited the fuel source on the floor, and was running back. The leech, meanwhile, reeled its esophagus backward.

It seemed like we couldn't move fast enough. Acid spouted from the leech's body rained after us. It sizzled on the water as it landed.

"Cover your ears!"

I did so just as the shot rang out, followed by the explosion.

It was far off, but it still shook the area. At least the container was rather small.

The leech squealed in pain, and we turned to see it thrashing before much more slowly trying to come after us.

Kevin opened fire on the weakened creature with his burst handgun. Cindy and I followed suit with our own guns. I tried to ignore the soreness in my chest and shoulders when we were so close to the goal.

The shots struck true, but the leech still came. It drew closer and closer still, causing us to back up even when it was still a decent distance away..

It seemed endless. Cindy's gun clicked empty first, and mine was second. For a few nervous moments, we relied upon Kevin. Running up to the leech and attacking it with a melee would was uncalled for, given that it still spewed acid.

At long last, the leech surrendered. It lay on the floor in a repulsive mess.

We panted hard, glancing around at one another. Kevin finally relaxed his grip, and placed the gun at his belt. He spent a few moments waving out his strained hands. The scene became substantially darker as the fire began to burn itself out from the amount of water that had been kicked up.

Words weren't needed as we picked our way past the animal. Kevin drew a breath, grinned, and ran on ahead. Cindy turned and gave me a small smile before continuing. I returned it, although I felt half ready to curl into a ball from the pain, exhaustion, and negative emotions.

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!


	5. Part V

The firemen that rescue the survivors at the end of Decisions, Decisions are free to leave the city, yet they haven't taken the Daylight sample, and cured themselves. My guess is that they weren't Raccoon City's firemen, but instead, volunteers from other nearby fire departments.

I wanted to give George and Yoko a bit of a larger role in this scenario. Both attended Raccoon University, and both had previously interacted with two of its key characters, George with Peter, and Yoko with Greg.

Dobermans are the standard cerberi in the games, but Rottweilers can cause much greater damage. This part also pokes fun at the in-game mechanic that causes the cerberi to run in circles.e.

The decapitated cop is a reference to Operation Raccoon City.

I own nothing.

* * *

Trudging through that waterway was cold, numbing, and long. Kevin handed over some of the remaining ammo to Cindy and me, and we kept our guns trained near the water, in case there were any remaining leeches swimming about.

The area was enclosed and pressing. The water swished in an ominous pattern. Vents split up the vaulted, dark ceiling at intervals.

Gates locked divergent paths off of the straight one, and we worried as to whether we were trapped. Turning back wasn't a choice.

In the end, our efforts paid off, as the path widened, the walls losing their rectangular shape to become cylindrical. The end of the hall widened into a vertical half-circle of an exit, with moonlight illuminating the water that flowed outside. On each side of the stream were dirt walls.

We decided against singing our praises. The length, height, and material of the tube we were walking out of would have caused the sound to echo toward any creature outside.

Instead, we were silent as we exited, the moonlight catching on Cindy's hair, and giving it a ghostly glow.

Kevin turned to survey how far the path stretched off. "Looks like we'll have to climb. The walls don't get any lower."

"It's awfully quiet," I mused. The only source of noise came from the running water itself.

"Do you think we made it to the city limits?" Cindy asked.

I thought of the hospital's layout and position for a moment. "We have probably walked to the train yard. We're in the more industrial district of the city now. We're still a long distance off from the limits, but we're further from the residential areas." I remembered the last part from having patients that had been victims of accidents while hauling heavy machinery.

Cindy smiled. "So in a way, you did get us somewhere safe."

I returned it. At least I had that, I supposed. Still, it hadn't been worth Kevin and Cindy going through what had occurred in the hospital, especially Kevin, at that.

Kevin turned toward the wall. "Looks a little slippery. Here, Cindy, I'll give you a boost."

"You don't have to strain yourself," she replied in a concerned voice.

"It'll save us time. Go ahead," he responded in a slightly more demanding way, and she decided against arguing.

After mounting his shoulders, she grabbed a hold of the top, and hauled herself up with a grunt.

"George, you're next. Just pull me up afterwards."

"You're sure?" I asked. There was quite a disparity in weight between Cindy and me.

"Just do it," he ordered, squatting back down.

His tone was rather hard. I supposed he was unhappy with himself about having brought about the Leech Man's demise.

Trying my best to keep from pressing down on him, I grabbed onto the top with both hands, and tugged myself up. Cindy threw in her own efforts by latching onto my arm and pulling.

After clearing the top, I turned back, offering my hands to Kevin. She did the same. I felt vulnerable with all of my attention focused on him, but it was only for a moment.

He jumped, and we caught his arms. With a surge of strength, we hauled him up, dirt flying.

The water continued flowing endlessly beneath us as we caught our breaths.

I turned to look out at our surroundings. The trains stood as sentinels against the darkness, their hulking forms shaped by their yellow and black jagged safety lines. Some sat together in groups, others alone. Their cars were loaded and ready to go as if nothing had happened. Abandoned semis and pickups were sporadically parked around them. The shape of a low building stood a good distance off. It was probably the foreman's office. Encircling the area was a chain link fence with barbed wire on top. Beyond that stood an overpass, the T-shaped concrete support beams towering overhead. Cars were stopped on it, having either been shut off, or run out of gas.

Loading docks with abandoned trucks stood at a collection of warehouses and abandoned manufacturing plants, which bathed the outer area in the ominous orange of their hazard lights. A few lights remained on in the windows, periodically broken by the appearance of a dark shape lumbering by. No hazard or service lights illuminated the train yard, however. I guessed that the foreman had killed the power.

Standing beyond the unnaturally peaceful industrial area, the main city's shapes were dark and hulking, with continuous bouts of orange, dancing light in-between, revealing that areas of the city had caught fire. Smoke billowed into the sky, filling the air with the odors of burning wood and rubber. Occasionally, helicopters hovered over the flames, their blades whirring. Sirens echoed ominously in the distance.

What caused more of a stir in us had been the chilling howl that seemed almost in answer to the sirens. I wasn't able to find the exact placement of the sound, but it came from somewhere within the train yard. It caused the hairs of my neck to stand on end, and my body to tense.

"We need somewhere to hide. Now," Kevin whispered in an urgent voice.

"The foreman's office is too far away. We'll hide in one of the trains or smaller vehicles," I replied as we started forward in half-crouches.

It was nice to get away from the openness of the waterway, and toward the closeness of the inner yard, but at the same time, it made me nervous. If something was inside the yard, we were heading straight for it. Possessing a flashlight wouldn't have helped, for an enemy could have traced the light toward us.

Trying the locks on the first few vehicles did nothing for us, save for causing noise by their rattling. We feared that it drew attention, and we were right.

While Kevin was trying the lock to a pick-up truck situated in between two trains, we heard the crunch of footsteps on the ground.

Before we could have reacted, a group of lights were thrown onto us. My eyes widened in surprise, causing the light to pierce them even more. I flung an arm over them, exclaiming, "What on Earth?"

"Well, well, well, what have got here?" Sniggers followed the words.

I squinted over my arm to see the outlines of four males, two of them rather big, and the other two average-sized. The smaller two held flashlights, and shined them right in our lines of vision, while the larger possessed metal pipes. Their clothing was disheveled, their eyes bloodshot and wide. Looters.

"Oh boy, a couple of kids trying to play robbers. Aren't they cute?" Kevin provoked, backing away from the lock and folding his arms. It was an attempt to show that he was unafraid of them, but it backfired, since it only made the looters angry.

One of the larger ones started forward, swinging his pipe menacingly. We quickly drew our guns. Our efforts failed, however, when one light was shined directly in Kevin's eyes, and the other was shown in Cindy's and mine.

While Kevin exclaimed obscenities, I reached out, and grabbed Cindy to pull her behind me. She needed to help protect us, and keeping her out of the light gave her a clean shot.

"Get back!" She warned in a shaky voice.

The advancing male only laughed, and continued toward us.

A shot exploded from beside me.

A split second later, the male's pipe slipped out of his hand. The top half of his form swung down as he let out a cry pain, grabbing his leg.

Cindy gasped at what she had done. The male's friends also gasped, dropping their flashlights. Kevin and I raised our guns at them. We didn't intend to kill them, but if they continued to antagonize and threaten us, they would have to face the consequences.

"HEY!"

The sound of a shotgun going off hit the air, quickly followed by the shell clanging against the train car nearest to us.

The shouting voice sounded familiar, but I didn't believe that I was hearing it. I had thought the speaker to be dead.

Much to my shock, David and Alyssa darted up behind the remaining three. I saw the outlines of the shotgun in David's hands, and a pistol and flashlight in Alyssa's. She \ shined it sharply at the three, who turned.

"I think it's time you called it a night," Alyssa hissed.

The four, realizing that they were outnumbered and outmatched, hastily made their retreat. Fearing the power of David's shotgun, they chose to make their way past us instead.

Cindy kept her eyes fixed on the wounded man in case he tried to exact revenge on her for damaging his leg. Kevin and I remained close by, guarding her.

We need not have worried. He merely glared at her.

Once they made their exit, our reunion commenced.

"Where the hell were you?" Alyssa exclaimed, dropping the beam of the flashlight to the ground. The anger on her face dissolved to relief.

Kevin smirked as he started forward. "Do my ears deceive me? You actually worried about us?"

She rolled her eyes at that, and Cindy giggled, although it was a short and nervous one.

Making a mental note to speak with Kevin and her later, I chimed in, "The question is, Kevin, did you worry about her?"

His jaw dropped, and Alyssa began to laugh. "George, I thought you were on my side!"

I held up my hands. "Medics don't take sides in war."

He turned to Cindy for help, but she said, "You heard him."

A grunt came from David to get our attention. His normally impassive face shone with a relaxed sense of relief, as if a small nightmare had ended. The expression was quick to come, and quick to go. "We have to go. The dogs heard us."

Chills went down my spine as I heard barking in the distance.

"Follow us! We know a safe place!" He didn't need to tell us twice.

We dashed through the darkness, barely avoiding hitting obstacles in our path. We were afraid of losing sight of David and Alyssa, and of coming within sight of the dogs. The leeches, as miniscule as they were, had devastated an entire building. I wasn't able to imagine what sort of damage a full-sized dog could wreak.

"Wait! Where's Yoko?" Cindy breathlessly exclaimed.

"She's in the safe area! Come on, it isn't far!" Alyssa replied, tugging her forwards to reinforce her point.

The barking grew louder, and we came to a halt in front of a train's engine to catch our breaths. As much as we wished to push on, our lungs were burning. The engine hulked before us, frozen in time from crushing us beneath its massive wheels.

Among the barking were the sounds of heavy, repetitive footfalls. The dogs were close.

"Damn Rottweilers," David mumbled under his breath.

Kevin, Cindy, and I exchanged glances. I'd been expecting Dobermans. Their speed would have made them dangerous, but at least they wouldn't have heard the muscle and girth to do serious damage. Rottweilers, on the other hand, could easily tear us asunder.

"Wait or run?" Kevin asked. His aggravation was plain to hear.

David held out a hand. "Wait…" He stretched the word out carefully.

My heart hammered along with the dogs' paws. They grew louder and softer at intervals, their bodies too far away for us to smell. Seconds stretched into minutes as the volumes switched over and over. Were they running in circles?

Slowly the moment came to pass when the pounding began to die away.

"Run!" David ordered, and we took off at once.

The dash was much shorter, but that didn't make it less difficult. Would the dogs turn around, and come after us again?

"On the platform!" Alyssa yelled, and we clambered onto the back of a train. A steel door faced us.

David pounded hard on it. "Yoko, open up!"

A moment later, the door swung inward, and we practically fell inside. The metal barrier to the outside was replaced once more as we lay on the floor, panting.

I glanced up to see Yoko leaning against the door, heaving, as if she had sealed the gate to the underworld.

"Kevin? Cindy? George?" She asked incredulously, panting in-between each word.

I \half-heartedly raised a hand in greeting, and she visibly relaxed, sliding down to the floor.

After taking the time to collect ourselves, it was the time to talk. Alyssa and Yoko, after escaping the burning encampment, had fled into the subway. David had hung back to search for Mark until the chaos had driven him into joining them.

Much like the hospital, the subway had held a terrible secret. The secret, oddly enough, had revolved around Yoko herself.

The three had found an abandoned subway car, and alongside it had been a young woman named Monica Parker. She had been a researcher for Umbrella, and had somehow known Yoko, who had been the first on the car's platform. Yoko, however, hadn't been able to place her in her memory (perhaps due to post-traumatic stress disorder).

Whatever the case had been, Parker had been happy to see Yoko for only one thing: her ID card. Yoko had also been a computer programmer for the same company in the past.

"I quit two years ago," she firmly explained to us, "Something happened that had forced me to do so. What, I can't remember, but all I know is that it was detrimental."

After she had at first refused Parker's request on account of the fact that the woman in question had failed to tell her what it had been needed for, and how she had previously known her, Parker had pulled her gun on the student. David had been the second to board the platform, and had tried to intervene, but that had stopped when Parker had then turned the gun on him. Alyssa had been forced to remain below.

Using David as leverage, Parker had forced the card out of Yoko's hands, and fled into the nearby maintenance area, taking a briefcase with a glowing capsule housed inside.

David crossed his arms tightly while the story was told, and refused to look at anyone. He was ashamed of something that was out of his control.

The subway car had been out of service, forcing the three to follow Parker. A climb through a ventilation duct had led to the rather curious discovery of an underground laboratory. They had been forced to fight against not only zombies, but a massive plant, a giant moth and its larvae, and mutated reptilian creatures. The latter had been encountered after they had been forced to thaw out one of the laboratory's floors.

The inner workings of lab had astounded me when they had been described in such detail. The hospital's lab had been so miniscule in comparison. I had very well understood the excitement and awe that had shone in Alyssa's eyes during the retelling. It had been a journalist's dream, but also a common man's nightmare.

Parker had gone unseen until after the floor had been thawed out. The purpose of such a change had been to maneuver the very train we were inside on a turn table, and ultimately, to leave. Moments before the turn table had been set to go up, Parker, in a dazed state, had approached the turn table, and collapsed. The briefcase's capsule had been broken. There hadn't been time to help her, as the table had already begun to rise.

The marshaling yard on ground level had presented one last obstacle: a small, experimental being had broken through the metal, and mutated into a massive, putrid mass of flesh and organs. It had been strong, but it had fallen to the firepower of its human enemies, as well as the weight of the train.

After its defeat, the survivors of its onslaught had got onto the train once more. The problem had been that the train had only one control: to turn on. The rest of the controls had been on a sort of autopilot, and an unknown code had been needed to override it. The train had raced off before coming to a pre-programmed halt in the yard. There hadn't been a reason for this, but we had guessed that it had probably had to do with shady dealings that the company had been undertaking.

David and Alyssa had been searching for a working vehicle when they had stumbled upon us. They had left Yoko behind in case their efforts had ended with their being chased. The door, as it had turned out, had only opened from the inside after the train had been sent on its course.

It was unsettling to realize that Umbrella ran that deep within the city. Now that the creators of the creatures had been destroyed, was no telling what sorts of horrors awaited us.

Then we told our story. I sunk down next to Yoko on one of the train's benches as I realized the implications of the two tales. I had rejected the position of researcher. Yoko had been one. We had both been in areas where Umbrella's might had been overwhelming. We had each gone to J's Bar for the very first time the night that this outbreak had begun.

When the four faces, none accusing, all inquisitive, turned to us, I let out a sigh. "You have to believe me when I say this. Neither of us has meant you any harm, nor have we been conspiring against you."

"I didn't know George until a few nights ago. How could we have planned anything?" Yoko supplied.

She looked down at her folded hands. "David, if I hadn't wanted you to be safe, I wouldn't have consented to Monica."

Alyssa shook her head. "Yoko, I'm not saying I don't want to believe you, but couldn't that have been a set-up as well?"

"No," David's reply was gruff, "No, I believe her. I saw how she tensed when Parker pointed the gun at her on the platform. That was genuine fear." He said it with such conviction that I wondered just what he experienced in his past to give credence to his belief.

Yoko smiled at him.

"The problem is, I didn't see that," Alyssa replied with a sigh, "But I'll give you this. When that giant moth dive bombed to grab me, you pushed me to the floor. Hurt like hell, but you saved me. That would've been the perfect chance to get rid of me. I trust you."

Yoko's shoulders sagged. As for the opinions we three held for her, they could only have been based off of what we had seen of her before the separation.

It was my turn to be placed under the spotlight.

I let out a sigh. "I'm sorry I led you to the hospital. That was a foolish decision. I latched onto what was close to me, and nearly cost you two your lives."

"If it makes you feel any better, I would've led us to the police station, but seeing as how the department's gone to shit, it wouldn't've done us any good," Kevin replied, shrugging, "Besides, I could tell you didn't know anything when you reacted to being told about where the bodies went."

I didn't want to recount that incident, but at least it benefited me.

"You also pulled me out of the way when that zombie attacked me. Even though Kevin managed to kill it, if it hadn't been for you, I would've been killed." Cindy added warmly.

I relaxed. They believed me.

"So what do we do now?" Alyssa asked, "We can't stay here."

Kevin, Cindy, and I exchanged surprised glances.

David shook his head. "I'm not leaving without Mark. He's one of the reasons why we're all still here."

"And Jim, as well," Yoko added quietly.

"Not to mention that the city limits are probably guarded," I added, "Heading toward them is a death sentence, considering everyone is infected. We'll need to find shelter and food. If there is a treatment for this virus, that is also a priority to find."

Cindy frowned. "Do you think there will be one developed in enough time?"

"Considering the fact that Umbrella hid an entire laboratory for biological research and development beneath the city, it's not that much of a long shot," Alyssa replied, her tone taking on frustration, "However, that wasn't the right place to look. If there was a cure to this virus we're sick with in the lab, it was either deleted or stolen by some asshole."

"Well, there is Raccoon University," Yoko suggested, sitting straight up, "Umbrella does hire and fund students there."

"Like you, for example," Alyssa pointed out.

"Right. It's a bit of a stretch, but the research there might be able to give us some clues," she shrugged, "If anything, it might be a safe place to stay for a while. The university's big, after all."

"In the meantime," Kevin replied, "We stop by the remaining shelters, and track Mark and Jim down, while keeping our eyes and ears open for anything about a cure."

Alyssa challenged, "It's a little hard to be playing cop when you look like you've just returned from a grunge concert."

"And it's hard to play reporter when you're wearing a tank top," he retorted.

Alyssa was no longer wearing her jacket, and black tennis shoes replaced her previous heels. Yoko had traded out her previous outfit, save for her backpack, for a jogging t-shirt and a pair of pants. David wore a wife beater and jeans in place of his plumber's uniform. In short, we all looked ridiculous.

She turned away, striding off. Kevin, however, followed her with a smirk on his face.

David rolled his eyes. "Dawn shouldn't be too far off. We'll rest up, and grab a ride in the morning."

At that, we dispersed. I found a different, slightly sturdier bench to rest on further back by the door.

I groaned as I sat back down, my soreness, empty stomach, and lack of sleep overwhelming me. The snacks from the hospital's vending machine had been lost in the water when we had fought against the leech.

The problem, however, was my inability to sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Hursh's face after the leeches had been burned off.

"Can I sit here?"

I looked up to see Cindy standing over me, her face troubled. I sat up, gesturing next to me. "I won't be sleeping any time soon."

She smiled sadly, sitting next to me. "I don't think I will, either."

I had a feeling what she was going to speak about, and decided to listen, rather than talk over her.

She looked down at her hands for a moment, and then at the wall before her. "I didn't think I would be the person to shoot a living human being. I wanted to be a nurse, to help people…And then this happened."

"You did the right thing," I reassured, "If you hadn't, he would've caused harm to us."

"That's it," she murmured, swinging her head to face me, "I didn't mean to shoot him in the leg. I wanted to shoot his arm, but it was hard to see. He'll die because he won't be able to get away from the monsters."

After a pause, I took her hand. "I can't condone what he was going to do, but you're also right; the punishment didn't fit the crime. That, however, wasn't your intention, although he did bring it on himself. I know it isn't enough to alleviate the guilt, but you have that, and that is what matters."

At her disconcerted expression, I gently added, "I had to face the same guilt after losing patients," I swallowed the lump back in my throat before continuing, "and shooting my ex-wife after she became a zombie."

She looked a little surprised at that information, but it passed, leaving sadness behind. "We're losing so much in all of this. It's a wonder we're still together in this little place," she squeezed her eyes shut, "When Will was killed, it was so surreal…He was one of the closest friends I'd had. It hurt so much…Now we're surrounded by death every day, but his is the one that stands out the most in my mind."

I looked away from her for a moment to think, and then looked back. "The deaths of those on that first night broke our ties with reality as we knew it. Now that we're trying to survive, and reconnect with that world we knew, they remain fresh to us."

Cindy closed her eyes, and I saw the tear sliding down from one of them.

"George…" Her voice was quiet, "Stay close to me."

I didn't make a verbal reply. Instead, I placed my arms around her. I had done it before while protecting her from Madison, but this felt so different, yet so natural. I had held my wife on many occasions before, when mundane problems had dominated us. None of those, however, had felt as desperate as this. All I wanted was for Cindy to live.

Early the next day, we left the train behind.

Searching for a way out proved fruitless and nerve-racking for the most part. Those Alyssa managed to unlock refused to start. Meanwhile, the noise from our efforts alerted the attentions of the dogs again, putting us on edge.

"David, this one had better be it, or else we're gonna have company." Kevin hissed, aiming his gun carefully from where Alyssa and he stood near the truck's cab. David had the door open, and only his legs were visible while he leaned half in, half out of the vehicle. He growled at Kevin to be quiet.

I had one arm over my nose and mouth. My eyes burned from the stench of the nearby dogs. They were close, their pounding on the ground loud and fierce. Their panting was akin to wheezing.

Yoko and Cindy were steadily drawing closer and closer to me as the pounding grew louder and louder. I resisted the urge to bolt, although there was nowhere to run.

"There!" David's exclamation was barely audible over the pick-up's noise. We climbed into the bed of the truck at breakneck speed, the tailgate down. The tarp was already on top, and we didn't see fit to remove it, in case the truck didn't work.

Yoko was the first in, followed by Cindy. The doors to the truck's cab swung shut after she got in. I went last. As I gripped onto the edge of the tailgate, I heard a fierce growl, and the sharp clicking of overgrown toenails as one of the undead dogs made a beeline straight for me.

Fear caused me to scrabble, but the women I counted on caught my hands, and jerked me onto the bed.

Knowing I needed to disconnect the tailgate, I spun.

The Rottweiler's mouth flapped open to reveal a much-ruined tongue, the muscle having lost its strength to do nothing more than simply hang there as a dead string of dark purplish-pink tissue. Broken teeth formed its mouth, and blood ran out of its jaws. Its ears were torn, and its ribs as well as spine protruded from where its fur had fallen out, and its flesh had rotted. Its leg bones also jutted out of the rotted skin in places (particularly the joints). Its paws were nothing more than a bloody mess of broken nails driven into the pads. Its eyes were set behind a film of cataracts. Following directly behind the lead dog were two others.

Gripping my handgun tightly, I fired down at the bolt that held the tailgate on just as the Rottweiler leapt for us. The spark startled it, causing it to fall with a yelp. I fired on the other, and the tailgate clattered to the ground.

Cindy and Yoko seized my arms to keep me from falling out the back as the pick-up lurched and spun.

Our surroundings were a blur for a moment, and suddenly, a sharp cracking and a high-pitched whine rang out as the pick-up truck jerked. One of the dogs had been hit and run over.

The remaining two dogs ran after us, slowly fading into the distance as David gunned the engine.

Unfortunately, it wasn't long until we abandoned the pick-up due to lack of fuel. We disembarked without looking back. There were no second thoughts. David started to lead the group, but fell back to stand alongside Yoko. Alyssa took up the other side of her, and Kevin stood directly before the journalist. Cindy and I were off to the side. The formation was neither close-knit nor uniform, and it did break on occasion. We split up to hide, or stood together to fight. The fact that the sun was hidden behind clouds helped us a little in way of concealing ourselves.

Bodies were everywhere. It was completely sickening and disheartening to all of us. I wanted those clouds to open and release the rain they held, washing away the remains of a once thriving society.

Once there came an instance that shattered the stillness. A car sped down the street, taking down a few sawhorses and careening into an abandoned police cruiser. It fishtailed, and hit a streetlight, its driver, a female, being propelled through the windshield with a parting moan. Running into the squad car had caused its alarm and siren to go off, which in turn prompted us to run.

A second, although much less noisy, interruption was in a body that we inadvertently found. We took shelter beneath an overhang in a side alley, the odor of death continually hanging around us. Yoko sat down on what appeared to be a low crate covered by a black sheet. A split second later, she leapt up with a cry.

"Something didn't feel right…" She murmured in a shaken voice.

Alyssa tore the sheet off, and we gasped at what was hidden beneath.

A police officer was laying face down, his head missing. His body was wasting away, but it appeared to be a normal decay, as most of his skin and muscle tissue was still intact. If he had been a zombie, we would be looking a much larger mess of blood and innards.

Kevin could barely contain his anger. "Who the hell would kill a cop?"

Alyssa thought for a moment before replying, "Someone who wants what happened in this city to stay secret. Come on, we have to keep moving. It isn't safe here."

Whatever conversations we had managed to kindle with one another were extinguished for the rest of the day as the fact sunk in that our human enemies weren't restricted to isolated incidences like that of Monica Parker; we were being hunted.

Hunger pangs struck us as the city's fires burned on, smoke billowing in the air. Even though we had slept the night before, lack of food made us weak. We needed something soon.

Our trek seemed endless, and at desperate times, pointless. Were we to wander in this shadowed labyrinth forever? The towering buildings held no answers in their silence.

Through the smoke, lights burned. We thought them to be flames at first, but their patterns were square and short, and they blinked on and off at intervals. Their scarlet color and heights gave away the fact that they were from fire trucks.

We wanted to run toward them, elated at their sight, but we chose not to. The headless corpse from before had warned us of any traps lying around.

As we came closer, we heard voices, the cries of human struggle. Orders for more water to put out the fires were shouted, while reply screams for provisions and assistance chorused with them.

We walked carefully into a small enclosure created by four massive fire trucks parked together, and an ambulance. The firemen were busy at work battling back the fire. Their efforts were fruitful, for the blaze was receding, but the overall bulk of the fire was too much; the firemen would run out long before this small section would be extinguished. They had realized this long before, and as such, were using the completely stripped-out ambulance to carry the remaining civilians with them to safety.

Standing before the ambulance and awaiting their turn to leave, their backs to us, were the men we had been seeking.

"Mark!" David exclaimed.

He turned sharply at his name being called, and blinked a few times, as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. I understood his reaction very well.

"Holy shit! You're alive!" Jim yelled, running over to us.

Mark was quick to join him. "We thought the VC got you!"

The exchange of words was short-lived, as at that point in time, we were told to board the ambulance. It was a bit of a squeeze. To our benefit, they were only three other survivors (not counting the two firemen that were driving it). At the same time, however, it was disheartening to see such a low number. The only source of optimism was the fact that our group was back together.

XXXXXX

The fifth and sixth days passed within extremely relative safety. Reaching the university, laughably, would only have taken a half hour during a regular day in Raccoon City, but the circumstances were extremely extenuating. Barricades that were barely holding lined every block, partitioning off side streets and alleys that would have easily brought us there, now clogged by the undead hordes.

We relied upon the volunteer fire departments from the nearby towns of Bradley, Fern, and Little Tree for protection. The local fire department, unfortunately, had collapsed, much like the police and medical forces. The Army had given up its quarantine, as there had been no means with which to sustain it. Leaving town, however, was not an option. If we left, we would run the risk of infecting others. Would we want to repeat this horror?

Kevin, Mark, and I no longer faced forced labor; the lack of organization prevented that from happening. That didn't, however, mean that we refused to help others when it was needed.

The mood was depressing. We were forced to face the fact that any semblance of life before the outbreak vanished. The paramedics were worn ragged, the doctors and nurses they worked for murdered, the police force mutilated, and the firemen literally and figuratively burned out.

We took advantage of our spare moments to speak among ourselves. Mark and Jim, after our group had been separated, had taken refuge in the Apple Inn just before it had burst into flame. They had been forced to not only brave the fire, but disgusting monsters that had crawled on the walls, and used their elongated tongues to snatch human prey.

Jim had discarded his jacket to the flames, as the dried blood on it had attracted the monsters in his direction, and replaced his tight-fitting jeans for shorts in order to move more freely. Mark had rid himself of his heavy security uniform in an attempt to remain cool, replacing it with a polo shirt and a pair of khaki shorts.

When we told them about Umbrella's hand in this malice, Mark and Jim were understandably shocked beyond belief. They had lived their lives completely innocent of this dark secret, as had we. Now that it was drawn to the forefront, it was made that much more terrifying.

The bonds we had forged helped to keep our mental states intact. We were lucky. I noticed over time how protective David had been of Yoko, and how he seemed to open up the most when speaking with Mark. Mark looked upon Jim as a sort of son. At times, he berated the younger man for making foolish decisions like wandering off on his own, and praising him for his victories in finding food and ammo.

Alyssa divided her time between conversing with Yoko and David, and arguing with Kevin. They fought over every little detail, from his maintenance of his .45 to her taste in movies. Yet, most of the arguments had a sort of playful tone to them.

Cindy recounted old times before the outbreak with Kevin and Jim, but spent a good part of her time working alongside and talking with me. I made good on my promise to stay with her, and I didn't regret it. When I wasn't with her, I spoke with Kevin. He was to slowly move on from all the carnage that he had seen and caused, as was I.

He was the only one I htold about my mutilating the researchers' corpses, and his reaction was rather disturbed.

"…So," Kevin finally replied after a long moment of staring at me, "we've both done fucked up things."

I nodded. "It would seem so." I felt disgust at myself notch inside of me once again.

He let out a breath. "You know, even though that shouldn't make things any better at all, it kinda does, in a way," he paused to stand, "It means that we both have to let this go. I didn't mean to hurt Hursh; hadn't realized it was him. You beat up on those researchers long after they were dead, and you had all the reason to. You didn't kill them in the first place, and after having to battle zombies, it was a lot easier to give in to doing that."

I gave him a lopsided smile. "Kevin, have you ever considered studying psychology?"

I also spent part of my time speaking with Yoko. I wondered as to what had caused her to block her memories, and hoped to assist her in clearing out the inner barricade. After her experiences underground, she spent much of her time pondering what she had forgotten.

"The most I know is that I was a student at Raccoon University when it happened, and I was a computer programmer on the side. I'm still a junior now, and I remember all of my sophomore year, and nearly all of my freshman year, save for…that."

Something suddenly seemed to dawn on her, as she sat bolt upright. "Wait, you went to Raccoon University, didn't you?"

"Correct, I am an alumni," I responded, curious as to what significance this information held.

Yoko closed her eyes. "I remember someone talking about you…it was a mention in passing…I…I can't see him in my head, but I can hear his words. He didn't sound very happy."

Although the university was behind me, this piqued my interest somewhat. Still, I knew better than to push her for answers.

"…I think his name was Greg?" She asked in an unsure tone after a few moments.

My eyes widened. "Greg Mueller?"

Yoko winced. I hadn't realized how bitter my tone was until then. Perhaps it wasn't all behind me as I first thought. "I…think that's right. Did you know him?"

"I did," I responded in a low voice. He had called me a complete failure twenty years ago.

More ghosts of my past surfaced on the seventh day of the outbreak, when I found a paper with my title, first, and last name on its top in bold tacked onto a message board with several others.

Taking it, I was utterly stunned to find it was from a friend I had made during my college days, and a man I had barely ever heard from after our time as students had ended.

-Dear George,

I have vital information about the current city crisis which only you will understand. I'm waiting at Raccoon University. Please, contact me as soon as possible.

Peter Jenkins-

The location listed wasn't surprising; we'd managed to advance far enough to the university's grounds that we were a block off. Still, the messenger himself was rather strange.

Peter had also been offered the position of researcher, as had Greg. Both had taken it. Peter, however, had not seen my act of declining as a disappointment, but after practically cutting communication with me, why had he called on me? Could he have turned his back on Umbrella?

Whatever the case, it was my only chance at getting to the root of this outbreak, and maybe, just maybe, grabbing a hold of the cure to this virus.

The paper didn't say to come alone, not that I would have considered it, lest my competence or integrity be compromised.

"This is great, but it sounds too convenient," Kevin muttered as he looked at the paper from over my shoulder.

"My question is, why didn't Jenkins stay to talk with you if he took the time to post this?" Alyssa asked.

"Maybe someone was after him? In case you guys haven't noticed, that's gotten to be pretty much the norm around here," Jim offered.

"Do you think that someone could have followed him to the university?" Yoko pointed out.

"If that's true, the stalker's an idiot. He's given Jenkins too much time," Alyssa explained, tapping the paper, "See? The ink is still dark. This was composed recently. If the potential kidnapper or killer had wanted him out of the way, he'd had six days of practical lawlessness to do it."

"Then what else could it be?" Cindy mused.

"It's not what could be, Cindy. It's what it is," Mark's gruff tone got our attention right away. Among our group, which teetered on disorganized, he was the closest figure to leader that we had. He was the most experienced in combat, and still retained his officer's voice, "We've been living on chances for a week. We're fools to think that we can run around like this forever. The disease will eventually get the better of us. is our only opportunity to change all that."

Arguments were raised against that, but eventually, everyone agreed to take Peter's offer.

"Thank you," I told him shortly after the debate dispersed.

Mark clamped a hand on my shoulder. "I hope to God that your friend knows what he's doing. I want to see my wife and son again."

I found myself unable to look into his eyes. That personal element had been forgotten in all of this. We still had those who cared about us waiting on the outside. Would we return to them again?

XXXXXX

"Man, I'm getting tired of these zombies." Jim muttered, staring down at the body on the floor.

After entering the university, we had divided into groups to search its first and second stories simultaneously. Cindy, Kevin, Jim and I had taken the lower floor, while Mark, Alyssa, Yoko, and David had chosen the upper. Given the size of the building, Yoko and I needed to serve as guides. She was more accurate.

We had much to search through on the student affairs office's table, with abandoned papers and books strewn everywhere, and a couple of computers still online.

Most of it turned out to be junk. The papers and computer programs were largely concerned with the current students, and the books covered topics that weren't relevant to the current situation, save one about genealogy. It was open to part detailing how a genetic mutation caused some animals, including tigers and moose, to have one red eye, and one blue eye. That explained the eyeless moose head in the main hall.

I cleared away a few papers about admissions to the university to reveal a white notebook underneath. In thick red marker on the cover was the name of its owner: Peter Jenkins.

I quickly flipped through it, hoping to find at least some clue to this puzzle.

I wasn't disappointed. It was a progress report of a Reagent compound Peter had invented and named Daylight. It was used to combat the T-Virus, a creation of Umbrella that, from what Peter's words implied, was an abomination. Oddly enough, his samples were provided by a researcher named Greg. I remembered that I had known Peter and Greg Mueller separately when I was younger, but I never did hear of them meeting. Peter's account was evident of that, as he spoke of this Greg as if he was a stranger. A rather terrible stranger at that.

Pages were torn from the journal, but what remained revealed that Greg had somehow managed to steal a sample of this T-Virus, and convinced Peter to create a cure. That cure was Daylight. Peter somehow managed to come across the fact that Greg had done something awful in his past, and he was merely using him for his own means. Peter, as a result, discarded the T-Virus sample, hid the notes for the compound, and decided to contact me. The journal ended there.

I snapped the notebook shut, closing my eyes. Peter knew that I had studied virology, but he knew also that I had left that study behind, yet he came to me of all people. Did it mean the virus that flowed in my very veins was the T-Virus, and Daylight the cure? What did Greg have to do with all of this, and was he the same man both Yoko and I knew?

A final question lurked beneath. Where did Yoko and I fit into this sinister enigma?


	6. Part VI

Every scenario that I've chosen to write in this story features trudging through water at least once. That's because water is used in baptism, symbolizing that George and the others are leaving their old lives for new ones. That is why Cindy loses Will, Kevin loses his fellow lawmen and women, and George loses his fellow medical staff, but the eight survivors all survive.

This part took the most amount of editing due to issues of excessive length and detail. I know that condensing a fanfic about Resident Evil Outbreak into six parts wasn't the best idea, but I did it for a reason. I wanted to represent the stages of change, from the initial inability to accept it, to finding a reason why it must be accepted, to finally completely accepting it. Writing the ending was the hardest part. I wanted to send a message not of futililty, but of acceptance. That could not be achieved with George dying (first ending idea).

I own nothing.

* * *

"That clock is driving me nuts." Kevin hissed as we checked the general manager's room. I was willing to agree with him.

A zombie could begin to pound on the door behind us at any moment. We had locked it, but the night at the bar had taught us that it wouldn't be enough. I had a very small stock of rounds remaining. Kevin had been forced to discard the handgun he had picked up at the hospital in the city streets because it had chewed up too much ammo. His .45 had one only round in the chamber. Jim had a slightly dented iron pipe. His gun had been destroyed in the Apple lnn by a vicious licker. Cindy had a little less than me. The only justification for killing the zombie in the previous room had been that the area had contained significant documents to peruse.

"Oh!" Cindy exclaimed, followed by the noise of a lock giving.

Whipping around from checking the coffee table, I saw a picture sliding up the wall to reveal a glowing button.

"That's some creepy stuff." Jim muttered, clutching a paper he had picked up from the president's desk.

She pressed her hand on it, and we looked around the room for any significant change. We found it in the clock, whose hands had lit up.

Jim scanned over the paper, and took a few moments to look up at the clock.

We watched as he had advanced toward the clock, and moved the minute hand to the number seven, and the hour hand to the number three.

The ticking stopped, and a bird had popped out of a small door in the clock, making us jump. A flash of scarlet caught our eyes, and Jim's hand closed around it to pull it out.

With a jubilant grin, he turned to face us, holding out a ruby. I counted myself lucky to have him with us.

The jewel fit into the moose's right eye. The others had not returned from the floor above at that point, which gave us time to investigate the other areas of the first floor.

One of the doors had its knob on that side broken beyond use. Deep claw marks sliced into the wood, which unsettled us.

The door further down had hits knob intact, and we cautiously proceeded.

Weak, gray light spilled onto the floor from the windows. A potted green herb sat on the end table next to the door before us. A couple of light green couches sat against the back wall, offering a comfort we hadn't the time to enjoy. Sitting between them was the bust of the school's first president, his stern sneer boring into the wall before him.

That stare served to magnify the intimidating moans of the zombie police officer that was advancing toward us, and the groans of the floorboards.

I started forward, dropping my gun. "I'll handle him."

As the zombie had come closer and closer, I braced myself.

With a grunt, I ducked my head down, and slammed into it, grimacing at the blood and body matter. The zombie stumbled backwards, giving me time to bring my gun up, and effectively pistol whip it, sending it into the wall.

I ran, the others quickly following behind, and opened the door to the next room.

Looking behind me for a moment, I noticed that Cindy had grabbed the herb.

Kevin pushed aside a nearby hutch to reveal a wooden pole beneath, equipped it for the time being, and decided to take the position as point man.

A series of moans from two different voices, and creaking greeted us in the distance. Behind us, a faint pounding began.

As we rounded the corner, another cop zombie lurched forward.

Kevin reacted by bludgeoning him with the pole, only to have it splinter. Swearing, he resorted to kicking him.

Jim brushed by me to assist him, and smashed the zombie across the jaw, sending a few teeth flying.

We skirted it, taking another left just as I thought I heard the door behind us breaking.

The remaining zombie was clad in a lab coat, and dangerously close. Cindy ducked just beneath the researcher's arms, confusing it for a moment, and giving Kevin and me time to shove it back.

Still, it blocked the exit, and the zombie behind us regained its senses. Fear bit me as the sound of the door opening echoed down the hall.

Cindy let out a cry at the creature advancing behind us, and pressed herself closer to me, holding up her gun. I held mine as well. While we faced to the rear, Kevin and Jim looked to the front. There was only one solution to this situation. The problem was, however, it would cause issues further down the line, if we survived.

A frustrated growl issued forth from Kevin, followed by a shot. The zombie before Jim and him collapsed to the floor, and they darted toward the door while we at first ran backwards to avoid being grabbed by the creature before us, and turned to follow after them.

The hall beyond was stripped bare of frivolity, its walls and floor a steel gray. On a crate next to the door lay a white paper. I had snatched it up just as a loud creaking came, causing the four of us to draw our weapons.

Much to our shock, the hall's right wall swung open, and out stepped none other than Alyssa. She reacted in the same way. Soon to follow were David, Mark, and Yoko, their appearances cutting the tension.

It returned full force, however, when pounding sounded on the door behind us.

We broke into runs, the newcomers hastily explaining that they had unlocked a service passage that had led from the second floor to the first.

Coming around the corner, we were greeted with the sight of a still-sparking power cord dangling from the ceiling. The concealing metal had been stripped away, leaving the cord and piping bare. Beneath the cord was a charred part of the floor, and on the left wall was a dark gray panel with a power button. A red light was on, and it indicated low voltage. The green was off, meaning that there was no high voltage. Still, that didn't give us any reason to walk directly underneath the cord.

Mark stopped to try a set of double white doors, and found they wouldn't give. There was no lock for Alyssa to pick.

David yanked open the single door on the opposite side.

After entering through, we found ourselves in the main hall once more.

I turned back, and found it to be the one with the broken knob.

"Did you find anything?" Cindy inquired as we started away.

David's hand shot into his pocket. "Only this."

He revealed the blue jewel to us, and Jim grinned. "I know exactly where that goes."

I studied the paper that I still clenched in my hand. The sheet was torn substantially, as if someone had been in a hurry. It detailed the change of an elevator code to numbers … 4…2…6…The first digit had been taken off. It felt like the hospital all over again.

A clicking came, and the wall before us slid open.

"I'll go first," Mark decided.

I volunteered myself to go second, and slowly, we went into the doorway beneath the staircase in single file.

Following directly a bare wood floor was a carpeted staircase. We descended slowly to find ourselves in a spacious, elaborately decorated study. Lamps warmly illuminated the room, giving it a sort of safe and secluded feel, even though this was clearly not true. The back center of the room held a desk, with a figure slumped over it.

Mark advanced carefully toward it on the right, his hand hovering over his pistol. I took the left, mine drawn, and held half-up in my right hand. The air was stuffy, and held a rather disturbing odor.

The source was the lab coat-clad person in the chair. The broadness of the shoulders indicated it to be male. The facial features slid into sight, and I stopped suddenly, gasping.

"What is it?" Mark asked urgently, drawing his pistol.

I made no reply for a moment, gritting my teeth. A moment later, I forced the words out. "This is Peter. He's dead."

The cause of death was easy to see. A bullet hole was in the back of his head. Blood on the desk indicated its exit.

A rustling of papers caused me to look down at the desk. Mark held out a blood-stained paper to me. "It has your name on it."

I dazedly took it, grasping onto the desk for support as I read, the dread rising in me. I was reading the will of a man who had known his death was coming.

After taking a moment to swallow, I explained, "The virus that is draining our very lives from us is called the T-Virus. Peter," I stopped to gesture to him, "was able to create a cure for this virus, known as Daylight. He couldn't use it because someone was trying to use it for their own means. He was aware of that, and contacted me. This paper I'm holding right now contains his instructions to recreate the cure. We'll need to gather three ingredients, and combine them in an incubator in the university's lab, which I remember to be on the third floor."

Stunned silence answered me, and I felt irritation gnaw at me. We couldn't waste time! "Yoko, it still is, isn't it?"

She nodded. "Yes, but without the correct ingredients, we won't be able to."

"Do ya think Jenkins could've left some other notes about this lying around?" Jim inquired.

"Only one way to find out." Kevin replied, heading over to a small table on my left.

After a small period of searching, we found the answers to a few questions.

The ingredients were known as the P-base, a substance in a basement tank that dissolved unless kept in an air-tight case, the V-Poison, a culture catalyst created from bee poison, and the T-Blood, which was a sample taken from a creature infected with the T-Virus. Supposedly, Greg was soon to deliver a sample around the time this set of notes was written.

The first digit to the elevator code, a number 3, also turned up in the study, as well as a recovery pill.

Finding nothing else worth using in the study, we had no choice but to depart.

I hung back for a little while to stare at the remains of my friend, paying my last respects to him as I did with Hursh. I was also trying to disarm my worries about the future, but to little avail.

XXXXXX

After entering the code to reactivate the elevator, we investigated the elevator bank room. Alyssa picked open one of the lockers, and found rounds for David's shotgun inside.

Mark noticed a television suspended halfway down the long, rectangular room. It was displaying the closed elevator doors directly before us, as well as Jim and Cindy, who were standing near them. Looking over their heads, we saw the camera pointed down at them.

"Let's hope whoever shot Jenkins doesn't have access to these," Mark muttered, drawing his pistol, "in case he does, I'll take care of this one."

After ordering the two out of way, he had shot the device, effectively shattering the lens and crippling the plastic.

Ironically, this made me more and more raring to unveil this mysterious figure. The very existence of this person was hanging over our heads.

The elevator had only three accessible floors: the third, the second basement, and the fourth basement. In order to save time, we decided to split into groups of two, even though our last separation had involved our being terribly cut off from each other.

After a little debate, we decided. Kevin, Alyssa, Yoko, and I would take the second basement floor. Mark, Jim, David, and Cindy would search the fourth. The groups were formed by consideration of two variables. The first were who worked the best together. Mark and David were friends. Alyssa got along well with Yoko. Kevin and I usually partnered up together. Cindy was friendly toward Jim. The second was the need of medics.

When we stepped out on our floor, we turned to look back at the others still inside.

David's eyes locked onto Yoko for a moment before drifting over to Alyssa. Mark was giving the two women reassuring looks, and Kevin a speculative once-over. Jim looked worriedly at each of us, as if scared that if we left, we would never return.

Cindy flashed Kevin a supportive smile before turning her eyes to me. An underlying combination of fear and confusion was released in that very moment. I felt compelled to step back into that elevator, and try to piece that shattered being back together.

I mentally held up a hand to that thought. If I wanted her to survive, I had only one way of correctly saying farewell.

I turned my fatigued vestige into that of serene calm, almost to the point where it appeared foolish.

Her expression softened somewhat. Personal issues and qualms were forced to take a back seat for the both of us.

"We'll meet on the third floor," Mark insisted.

The doors closed, and elevator drifted down.

It left me with cold loneliness, one which was only dispelled by my three fellow human beings standing near me.

The room was a storage area for boat attachments and tools. A few stripped motorboats were lying behind a chain link fence.

A shelf disclosed a first-aid spray to us, which Yoko had stored away, and rounds for Kevin's pistol. Still, our rather low stock of healing items, which were comprised of the recovery pill, the spray, and two mixed green herbs, combined with our dangerously limited ammo and Yoko's meat cleaver, did not bode well.

Just beyond the supply shelf was a ladder leading down into a manhole.

The smells of sewer system were unpleasant, but they thankfully didn't hold the rankness of decay. In a way, the dingy atmosphere lifted our spirits, if only for the moment.

We went through a much-rusted, wrought iron gate. The squealing of the metal made it seem as if the very structure was protesting our advance, causing us to shrink away before proceeding.

The passage beyond held a ladder climbing up the left wall, and from above that, down drifted a muted moan magnified to a low tempo by the echo-enhancing concrete.

Unfortunately, with a fence barring us from proceeding further forward, our choice was to take that ladder.

Leaving the pipe, Kevin volunteered to go first, and none of us protested, knowing he would take it down the quickest.

After the deed was done, we continued on into a maze of halls prowled by a few zombies wearing soiled lab coats, their moans providing a terrifying chorus.

A storage room disclosed a map of a hidden laboratory, and of all things, a grenade launcher. Its ammunition was quite restricted; only four rounds. Kevin was charged with handling it due to his superior aiming techniques. With the very little ammo that remained, we did no better than ward the zombies off.

"We must be getting close," Yoko whispered as we entered a room complete with controls and computer screens.

I grimaced at a white, wheeled dry erase board that was splattered horizontally with blood, as if someone had been dragged across it.

"There's the P-base dispenser!" Alyssa declared in an elated voice, pointing at a machine with an imprint for a cylinder. The green lights illuminated what was inside, confirming her words.

Kevin bent down, picking up something off the floor. "This is probably the capsule we can get it out with."

"No, don't use that yet," I instructed, "Check to see if it is air-tight."

He had spun it in his hand to better take a look, and frowned. "It's cracked."

Yoko had let out a sigh while Alyssa tried picking the red-lit door on the other side of the room.

"Well, seeing as how I can't open this, we'll need a key. I'm guessing it's a red one, given the color of the light."

Braving the halls again was difficult, there was no debating that. The horror of it, however, completely paled in comparison to a mysterious waterway we entered. Metal walkways traced around pools set in a grid. The low light took away the sight of even a shadow of the creature beneath, but we heard the water sloshing, as well as an odd sort of animalistic sound echoing throughout. The best way I can describe it is singing.

We moved on quickly to the next room, passing by a few heavy-looking crates to come to a metal bridge over a massively-flooded complex. The railings of a tall staircase served as water markers.

At the end of the bridge was a rectangular chamber with a port hole inside. We weren't willing to come close to it, but a key with a red tag was lying alongside it.

Kevin went first, the grenade launcher at the ready. Alyssa and I followed, and Yoko brought up the rear.

The eerie stillness dissolved once the port hole was suddenly darkened.

"BACK UP!" Kevin ordered as a violent pounding came from within the chamber, the metal screeching its final pleas as the atrocity inside burst out of it, flew through the air, and slammed down.

The squat, yet massive being resembled a frog, possessing the powerful jumping muscles, dark green color, and gaping mouth. The difference was found in the fact that this had claws.

The police officer was in the middle of raising the grenade launcher to fire when the beast tackled him. A loud splash followed as they hit the water.

The grenade launcher, effectively knocked out of his hand by the force of the overgrown frog, sailed through the air to land beside the key.

A second later, another burst came from the water directly behind the bridge, and I spun to see another of these abominations leap out, and head right for Yoko.

I grabbed onto her backpack strap, and begun to tug her out of the way, but I was too late.

My arm felt as if it were being jerked out of its socket as she was torn from my grasp, the strap breaking off in my hand.

I whipped around to look at Alyssa, my alarm mirrored on her face.

"I'll get them! You provide cover fire!" At that, she jumped over the rail.

I ran to grab the grenade launcher, taking the key as well.

As I dashed back onto the bridge to get a clearer aim, I found myself at an impass.

While Alyssa was assisting Kevin, who the mutated frog seemed to be in the process of both drowning and attempting to swallow whole, Yoko had zero protection, and her attacker was coming fast.

I decided to fire on her monster first.

The frog's head exploded, blood gushing into the water.

While Yoko swam for safety, I sought out my next target. The creature was distracted by the sudden death of its brethren, giving it just the correct amount of release for an unconscious Kevin to drift away. The round completely decimated the creature, sending red, pink, and green ooze everywhere.

I ran off the bridge to help Yoko climb back onto the platform. She was shivering profusely.

Spotting a thick blanket on one of the crates, I draped it over her shoulders, and went back to the platform's edge to grab onto Kevin's arms, and hull him up after Alyssa had towed him over. Yoko helped her to climb up, and the reporter took refuge under the blanket with her.

It became a race to help Kevin. After tilting his head to side and checking his airway, I found a small amount of water within, and removed it via Heimlich maneuver. Once that was finished, I resuscitated him.

At last, Kevin coughed, and spluttered for air.

"Get another blanket!" I ordered while checking his pulse.

Kevin's eyes cracked open as Alyssa tossed a tarp she had found over him. "Phew. Made it."

After he gave Alyssa and me his thanks, and Yoko had likewise thanked me, I disclosed the key. Although Kevin could take the recovery pill, we had to leave the ruined mixed herbs behind.

Before we left the room, however, Alyssa stopped me. "Thanks for the help back there."

"I should thank you as well. You acted very bravely."

She shrugged. "I guess if I wasn't a reporter, it would just be called 'doing my job.'"

As she turned to go ahead, I found myself satisfied with the fact that she had rejected my gratitude. Alyssa understood that those in charge of rescuing others at times were forgotten when credit was due, and that meant a lot to hear.

XXXXXX

The creature that was drifting in the water reveled itself to be a twin of the overgrown frog as it swam closer to the surface. We hurried into the next room just as it breached.

Compared to before, avoiding the living dead was nothing more than child's play.

The red key worked on the door, which unfortunately disclosed another mutant beyond. It guarded a control panel that we needed to access, so Kevin removed it with the grenade launcher.

Unfortunately, our journey was far from over. The panel only unlocked a door beyond a fence, and Yoko remembered not entering through a door in the room with the two dead amphibians. The backtracking was tiresome.

This time, we didn't manage to avoid the frog. Yoko ducked and crawled underneath its sweeping arm, but it had one other target: me. I gritted my teeth in pain as the claws sliced into my chest, tearing my clothing and flesh, the agony driving me to my knees.

Kevin resorted to his .45. Alyssa also fired on the beast. Yoko had tried stabbing it from behind, but its scales had been too thick.

At last, it fell, leaving me bleeding from three slash marks. Yoko repaired my injury with the first-aid spray, but the damage was done. We were left without any healing items.

To make matters even harder, in order to get to the door, we needed to shimmy across two series of pipes in the ceiling. While the threat of the mutated frogs had been removed, we still had to hold our body weight up as we passed their decimated floating corpses in the water, the scene utterly unpleasant.

Kevin managed to pick up a container of explosive rounds for the grenade launcher on the middle platform. Of course, I found this to be quite funny.

Beyond it was a rather messy control room consisting of malfunctioning computers and panels. Alyssa managed to uncover another first-aid spray, while I found a box of handgun rounds.

After Alyssa and I split them among ourselves, we entered through the door to find another creature waiting for us. I had found it odd that we didn't look more into how these beings had come to be, rather, we merely accepted them, but there was simply no opportunity to do otherwise.

At last, we found the sealed case on a control tower, and dove into the water below as a shortcut back to the room with the dispenser. Finally, the P-base was in our hands.

We hadn't bothered to battle with the remaining zombies, rather, we simply ran back to the scene of the battle with the first-encountered mutants, shimmied across again, and climbed up a ladder leading out that was from the door we had taken earlier.

Familiar voices caught our ears, and we were shocked to see the others standing in the middle of what was the university back lot.

"Hey, over here!" Kevin called, catching their attention.

The reunion that ensued was one of hysterical thankfulness. After our dances with death, we were more engrained than ever in our search for companionship. David, sporting an ugly scratch that barely missed his eye, embraced Yoko. Jim, his hands covered in gashes that had begun to scab over, babbled at an accelerated pace to Kevin. Mark, his pant leg torn and revealing ugly bruises, had clapped Alyssa on the shoulder. Cindy, her right sleeve completely nonexistent, and displaying a still-healing gouge wound, practically ran over to greet me. I opened my arms, and drew her to me.

The other group secured the V-Poison from a hive of gargantuan arachnids and insects. That left the T-Blood. Its source was near, as were standing on the site of where a squad of Umbrella's militant wing had been sent to eliminate a creature known as Thanatos, according the orders the corpse of the squad's commander clutched to his breast. We were in over our heads, but if we had wanted to live, we would have had to track down the source, and extract it.

The door back inside was opened by a university key card that had been found in one of the pockets of a member of the squad. I was ready to enter when Cindy softly called to me to wait.

Turning, I saw her framed against the weak light above the door. We were alone; the others had already gone in. Thanatos would be on our heels soon.

"George, I—"

I cut her off with a swift apology before pressing my lips to hers. She fastened her hands on my shoulders, tugging me both down and closer in one dizzying moment. For once, just once, I forgot the darkness, the pain, the fear…and then it all came tumbling back as we broke apart.

Upon reentering, we were met with ardent pounding on the door before us.

"OPEN UP!" Mark shouted.

Seized by impulse, I yanked it open to have the others barreling past me.

A wild, yet abnormally human, roar gave the why. We sprinted around the corner, with David pausing beside the right wall.

"What the hell are you doing? Move!" Kevin exclaimed.

I caught onto his plan when I saw the switch.

The door around the corner burst open with a splintering crack, and heavy, pounding footsteps sounded. We braced ourselves, pulling our weapons, but David stood calmly, waiting.

A half second later, the titan that had was Thanatos had made its appearance. It was colossal, with a height that reached well above six feet. Its muscles bulged to a distressing size. Its exposed heart was swelled up, and thumped at an extremely fast pace. Its pupil-less eyes were fixed us with a strange, ghost-like stare. Its bulky hands bore sharp claws. Sticking out of its right shoulder was a syringe containing a capsule filled with its blood.

In a burst of electricity, it fell with a mournful groan. David ran forward and grabbed the syringe, which caused the tyrannical monster to give an unconscious jolt. It was still alive.

We sped to the elevator bank instantaneously, but we still heard its vengeful bellow echoing through the university's halls as the elevator doors closed.

Setting the ingredients in the incubator was the least of our issues; the wait was much more difficult. Cindy mixed a red and green herb we found upon entering the third floor, while David hreloaded the shotgun. The others either wandered aimlessly about the room, or searched for other items.

I had just finished mixing a blue herb when the incubator suddenly stopped, its power killed. The door next to it gave the sound of its lock releasing.

"Aw man, not now!" Jim lamented as Mark opened the door.

The area beyond was decorated with surgical curtains. While a few of us went through a doorway to the left, I chose to advance toward a curtain directly in front. The light behind flashed and periodically changed. A projector?

Footsteps behind me made me turn to look and see Cindy, David, and Yoko.

The curtain whispered behind us as we passed through, and I gasped as the barrel of a gun was lowered in front of my face.

"George, it's been too long," Greg Mueller greeted, tilting his head to the side.

"Let him go!" Cindy exclaimed, reaching for her own gun.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," he replied smoothly.

"You had no problems with killing Peter," I hissed.

He shook his blonde head. "I wouldn't expect you of all people to understand. Peter's creation is a miracle in itself, but he chose the incorrect way to implement it."

"By offering it to me so I could help others?" I responded in an aggravated tone.

"By offering it to a puppet of Umbrella, so that the cure could be easily taken away for further research."

"Hypocrite, aren't you?" David commented in an acidic tone, pointing at the Umbrella logo on Greg's lab coat.

"I wouldn't consider myself as such. Umbrella wished to steal my life's work from me, and mass-produce it. Gods should never be treated in such a way," he used his free hand to indicate the entire room, "The world prizes individuality. It is why the masses flock to one hero. I, the creator of such a piece of art, should be given the liberty to keep it that way."

"It sounds as if you're dictating a manifesto," Cindy replied, folding her arms.

"In a way, young lady, I am. It's such a shame that you won't be able to see the end result of it, as your affair with the good doctor here ties you so closely to him."

She gasped in outrage, and I reached out to grab her hand.

"I'd rather not pollute this occasion with sentimentality." Greg warned, and I effectively dropped my hand in turn.

The sounds of the others running in came, and I glared at him. How could I have ever considered him a friend? He was completely twisted, a megalomaniac.

"Ah, the rest of my audience has arrived. I have quite a treat for you. You're going to play with my ultimate creation."

Kevin and Alyssa started toward him, but Cindy held them back with a speedy explanation of what was happening.

"You can't do this! It's a violation of—"

Alyssa was cut off by laughter. "The anarchy of this past week has rendered law void. This is my world now."

"No, it isn't!" Yoko snapped, stepping forward, startling me. Throughout the entire conversation, she had been silent, as if in a trance.

Greg appeared worried. It was replaced by calm shortly afterward, but his attention was focused on her, not me.

Mark grabbed onto my shoulder to tug me back.

"Yoko, it's been two years. Oh, but you probably don't remember."

She shook her head fiercely, fire burning in her eyes. "You're wrong."

The gun wavered as he replied in a nonchalant tone, "Oh, really?"

Unbeknownst to him, David began to slink forward.

"You tricked me into becoming a test subject for the effects of the T-Virus! When I found out, I tried to tell the police, but you caught me, and operated on my brain so I would forget!"

"That's fucked up!" Jim exclaimed.

"It's a shame no one else will hear this story," The gun was taken off me, and trained on her.

Yoko stood defiant against it.

David's right hook collided with Greg, who dropped his gun. Blood began to gush out of Mueller's chin, soaking him and David before he fell onto the floor, his bodily fluid splattering the projector's light.

"I didn't do that!" David exclaimed in shock as a loud beeping noise began to go off all around us.

"It's a bomb! We have to hurry!" Mark exclaimed as Alyssa and he ran behind the computers at Greg's desk.

"You okay?" Kevin asked Yoko and me.

She nodded her head, and I replied, "I'm fine. We have to restart the incubator, quickly!"

"Already done!" Alyssa called.

"All locks on the university are open! Let's move!" Mark ordered.

There wasn't time for me to speak with Cindy. Running alongside her was enough for me.

Sound and vision blurred into a terrifying enigma as we grabbed the phials of Daylight out of the incubator, and purged the T-Virus from our systems for good. I let out a sigh of relief as the virus was obliterated, and felt my skin prickle as it was effectively drained out.

The machine moved slower than we wanted, but somehow it managed to do its job. Before leaving, I made sure to grab a sample in order to recreate it if we did make it out alive.

After taking a side door out of the room, we arrived in a service passage, and quickly clambered down.

"Has anyone seen Yoko?" David called.

"I'm here!" She replied, running through the door on the top platform. We were already on the lower level. "Just go! I'll catch up!"

Beyond the next door was the president's room. The group that previously explored the university's upper level knew how to navigate the area, and we relied on them. Yoko caught us by the time we entered the next passage.

Our frantic run was interrupted by a malicious roar. Thanatos knew we were there. We quickly climbed down the ladder, his arm barely missing Yoko's head.

The beeping dominated the hall as we emerged. Just a little further...The floor shook. I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the killing blow.

It never did come. The double doors swung shot behind us, and we ran forward just as the university exploded, bringing us to the ground on our knees from the tremors, our hands clasped over our ears.

A continuous humming sound from above became louder as its source moved closer to us.

I looked up, incredulous to see a helicopter hovering over us. I shielded my eyes with my arm against the light it shined down on us.

"We're here to get you out! Meet us in the university's back courtyard!"

We rose as one, running after the helicopter through a steel door to a loading bay.

Words were never spoken. Actions did that for us. We helped one another over the obstacles, and turned back if someone was falling behind. The helicopter would wait. David and Alyssa never asked Yoko why she hung back, but they kept close to her. Cindy never mentioned what happened with Greg, but she tended to stop if I fell out of her line of vision.

We were making our way to the next door when a giant figure crashed onto the earth before us. It was Thanatos, gravely disfigured from the blast, his left arm made into an impaling tool by his exposed bones.

Jim, being the closest, reacted in a way any normal man would: he fainted.

While he was ignored by our pursuer, we screamed out in shock and fury, scattering.

Kevin attempted to batter him with the grenade launcher, but was forced to run when the tyrannical monster tried to squish him by jumping on him. David's shotgun and our hand guns did damage to him, but it was minuscule. It wasn't fair!

Every time Kevin tried to take a shot, Thanatos would interrupt him. While we had to climb around abandoned truck beds, the tyrant could pounce on us, and hit us with his arm.

Alyssa let out a groan of pain as she was struck, nearly falling off the truck bed. She was splayed out on it while her would-be killer advanced slowly, raising his silver arm.

"Get up!" Kevin cried desperately as he aimed the grenade launcher upwards, and struck a hit. Thanatos jerked, but paid him no attention.

"Alyssa!" Yoko screamed.

A massive projectile blasted into the monster, its concussion knocking it down immediately.

We whipped around to see Mark, who had a self-satisfied look on his face from where he toted a still-smoking rocket launcher.

Jim, who was next to him, grinned broadly. "Thank God I know how to play dead!"

A moment later, Alyssa stood on, an embarrassed look on her face. She'd gotten off easy, the fall merely knocking the wind out of her.

After breaking down the door, we dashed up the stairs to the courtyard, where the helicopter hovered just overhead. I sighed in relief. It was over.

Icy fingers ran down my spine as that terrible roar came again, and Thanatos slammed down forcefully on the ground before us once more.

"Not again!" Kevin exclaimed.

The fight was easier to navigate, but provided much less room.

David advanced on the creature, but was flung away, crashing against a wall. Kevin tried to fire on the tyrant, but it leapt out of the way.

Jim threw a completely dented metal pipe at the creature, stunning him. I took that gained time to aid David. Cindy followed close behind.

He held out his shotgun to me. "Take the damn thing. I can't tell which way is up."

I turned to Cindy. "You'll be fine on your own?"

She nodded. "Go!"

Running across, I managed to strike the creature in the back as it charged right for Jim after regaining its sense.

Alyssa tried firing at its heart from the side, but it was doing nothing. She cried out in anger as her gun clicked empty.

The first shell from the shotgun did nothing to draw it, but the second and third did before the gun ceased to fire.

Even though the monster's eyes still held that milky white, there was no mistaking the rage in them.

Against my better judgment, I taunted, "You're worse than my ex-wife."

The next moment, I was flying through the air, crashing on my side just short of a broken-down tank. I groaned as the shotgun slipped out of my hands. The fingers of one hand felt a stray piece of metal, and clenched around it.

The hulking figure swam in my vision for a moment as it advanced toward me again, but it was suddenly blotted out by Mark, who drove him off with handgun fire.

Kevin crouched beside me. "George…Oh God…The hell were you thinking?"

"I wanted to give you a clear shot," I replied in a monotone voice, "Grab this metal behind my head, and show me what it is." I tasted copper in my mouth, and I felt blood trail out of the side of my jaw.

Kevin complied, and revealed it to be a capsule shooter. "It's empty."

"Not for long," I muttered, "Reach into my right pocket, and grab the Daylight sample. Load it into the gun, and fire."

As the glowing phial was removed, I felt ashamed. I was sacrificing the fates of many for the lives of the few, but they were all I had left.

He promptly ran off, only to be replaced by Yoko.

"Hang in there," she murmured, handing me a recovery medicine.

I craned my neck to see past her to watch Kevin pace back and forth carefully with the shooter held close. "Make that shot count. It's our only chance."

Yoko twisted around to get a glimpse at what I was seeing. When she turned back, her eyebrows were raised. "You implanted a Daylight sample in the capsule shooter?"

I nodded. "It's a poor decision, considering that was our only spare, but it had to be done."

She shook her head. "I picked up another!"

I stared in awe as she removed the phial from her backpack to show me. I would've laughed, had it not been for the pain.

A guttural scream of pain exploded from behind us.

With Yoko assisting me, I stiffly stood to watch the tyrant collapse to the ground. White cracks were forming all over its body, and exploding.

As the helicopter banked to a landing, Alyssa ran to Kevin, and gave him a kiss as a reward for his efforts.

We began to board the helicopter, with Cindy assisting David. When she saw me, the blood from my bleeding jaw crusted on my chin, and my skin probably covered in a few nasty bruises, a sad smile formed on her face. Mark, having already climbed on board, tugged the two up. Kevin grabbed onto my hand, pulling me up, while Jim grasped Yoko's hand.

Alyssa slammed the door shut behind us, and we were off.

"You were lucky," one of the pilots declared, turning to look back at us, "That was our final sweep of the town. The order's been given to blow it up."

The news was neither met with shock, nor anger, but silent acceptance. Deep down, we had all seen this coming. Raccoon City was lost, that little could be said.

Still, as I sat there, staring out the window at what was to come, with Cindy laying her head on my shoulder and Kevin across from us, I found myself childishly gripping at memories. Ruth…Hursh…Peter…

In a single explosion, it was all gone.

"We'll be landing in Bradley soon, folks. Don't get too comfortable." The other pilot warned.

So much had to be done. I needed to take care of my injuries, call my family and tell them I was all right, somehow manage to repair my decimated financial situation, and above all, mass-reproduce the cure for the T-Virus. I certainly couldn't forget about Cindy, as well.

All of this seemed to leave me, however, when Yoko pulled out the Daylight sample. Despite it all, we lived on.

XXXXXX

Victory came without celebration or fanfare.

The wind whistled on the apartment balcony as I stood near the railing, looking out at the city beyond.

Soft footfalls caught my attention, and I turned to see Cindy joining me. I held out my hand invitingly to her.

It was over, at least for a little while. The Daylight was finally being widely distributed.

She took it, and allowed me to lead her to the railing, on which she planted her elbows, and leaned forward.

Life was harder for each of us. Once upon a time, she'd wanted a nice little house and children. Both were, and still are, unfortunately out of the question, though it pains me to say that. Umbrella was bound to find us unless we counted on Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine to cloak us. Our bags were already packed to leave in the morning.

Another dream was soon to die. It would be impossible for her to work as a nurse in a hospital without getting caught. I could basically throw out my title. We could make up for it by healing those who protected us. I doubted that our guardians would allow us to go hungry.

Cars continued to speed busily below.

Mark and Jim had it easy, in a way. The two had gone into witness protection, Mark sheltering his family, while Jim got on with his own life. We rarely heard from either, and for good reason. I wished them well.

Cindy straightened up, and walked more closely to where I was standing. I placed an arm around her, hugging her to me.

Yoko was living with David. He charged himself with keeping her safe after she testified against Umbrella in court. I didn't blame her for doing so. Kevin and Alyssa were doing the same after she had exposed Umbrella's dark side in an article. We each couldn't shake the feeling that something awful was probably awaiting us in spite of our achievements.

I sometimes wondered what I had done in the past to deserve all of this, but let it go.

The new wedding band reminded me a little of my previous marriage, but I refused to let a petty fear like that get to me. Cindy wouldn't have said yes to me if she wasn't ready to face what that entailed, even if that meant each of us carrying pistols, and occasionally looking over our shoulders.

"Thank you," I whispered.

No other words were needed. The future looked rather uncertain at best, and bleak at worst. We both, however, were used that sort of thing. Tomorrow didn't matter, not yet.


End file.
